The Battle of the Golden Wood
by Marnie
Summary: What Haldir was really doing during the Battle of Helm's Deep! Celeborn, Galadriel, Haldir and Thranduil (and a host of OC's) battle against Dol Guldur.
1. Many Farewells

Battle of the Golden Wood 

By Marnie 

*********************************** 

Chapter One 

*********************************** 

_Namárië! Nai hiruvalyë Valimar  
Nai elyë hiruva. Namárië!_

Swiftly Anduin bore away the boats of the Fellowship. They passed like fallen leaves, swept from sight. Galadriel lowered her hand and, as the song ended, she stood gazing out into the wide, grey lands beyond Lorien. _Now shadow reaches out over all, and it may be that the only escape to Valinor henceforward will be through death._

Celeborn stepped up beside her, studying her face. He would not intrude on her thoughts, but it was possible he could discern them even thus, though he smiled. "We have drunk the cup of parting," he said, echoing her own words, "And my Lady bids me be not sad." He shook his head, his silver hair glinting like the surface of Anduin. "Even this impossibility I will accomplish for you. If you will do the same for me." 

What a fool she had been to speak such words. Returned upon her, she tasted their heaviness. _How can I not be sad, when I have given up even the faded remnant of my dreams? So sure I was that I would accomplish everything, yet if I return at all, it will be with nothing. Last and least of all my kin._

"You let the Ring go," Celeborn said, taking her hand, "I wondered if you would find the strength." 

"You _wondered_? You didn't _know?_" She pulled away, feeling ill-used and then angry. "You doubted me?" 

He took a step back in mock fear, but there lurked in his eyes a look she had learned to associate with a certain Sindarin harshness in him. A look which would have sat well on the face of Oropher, or Thranduil. She braced herself. She had not married him for his fine manners, but, in part, for exactly this gift of pointing out the bald truth. Not a comfortable gift, but a valuable one. 

"Since you exiled yourself for Feanor's gems," he said, "And could not resist Celebrimbor's Ring, though you knew it to be tainted, I had a right to be unsure." 

Water murmured against the river bank, chuckling beneath the roots of the alders as Galadriel braided up her hair once more, her thoughts like a shadow over her. In truth, he saw more clearly than she would have liked. He always had. "You had a right to doubt, indeed," she said, "For now that it has gone beyond my reach, I wish I had accepted it. If I had, we would not now be waiting powerless, for the Enemy's wrath to fall on us like the sea." 

The swan boat drew level with them, and leaping aboard he offered her his hand to help her in. As usual she disdained the petty courtesy and made her own way, light and quick as any wood elf. It made him laugh. "Nay," he said, "I am glad you did not take it. I should not have liked being wed to Morbereth, Dark Queen of the Earth." 

She had turned to the prow, as was her wont when unobserved, but now she turned back, both horrified and amused. Would he never stop renaming her? "Do not jest so! It is in ill taste." 

"I do not jest." 

In Doriath there had been a softness to his beauty - the sheen of untried youth. That was gone now, and though he did not claim the title, he was kingly, stern and fair as Elwë himself. It was a hurt she would not think on, that he loved the lands of Middle Earth more than he loved her. That whether victory came, or not, these days were the last they would ever spend together. For he would not chose to go to Valinor with her, even were she to lower herself to plead. 

If she had kept the Ring, that would have been the first of her choices she would have forced on him. But it would not have been the last. 

She shuddered. "What would you have done, if I had taken it?" 

His face darkened and he turned away. "Let us not speak of that." 

The swan boat nudged the hythe gently, and silently they disembarked. She took his arm and walked by him, the foreknowledge of loss making even this small closeness precious to her. They climbed to the Great Hall, and looked out at the fume and heavy darkness which lay over Dol Guldur. Hidden beneath endless night, in the dark and spider-infested forest of Mirkwood, orcs were breeding, brooded over by the starved and deathless mind of the Nazgul Khamul, and the sleepless Eye of his master, Sauron. 

"The shadow has grown," said Celeborn quietly. "We have little time to prepare before war is unleashed on us." 

Galadriel's thoughts were with the Ringbearer, and beyond him, in Valinor. "Let us hope Frodo succeeds," she said, "Or before this year is out you, I and all our people will have gone West by the speediest route, and fire consumed every tree. Lorien will have become a place of wraiths and dread, like the Marshes of the Dead in the Land of Shadow." 

Celeborn laughed again. "My lady is cheerful this afternoon." 

She had drunk the cup of parting and given up, with her ambitions, all hopes founded in Middle Earth. But she smiled at her husband nevertheless. _I will do the impossible for you, and grieve not. And I will see that this land, where we have been happy, is preserved. It will be as my farewell gift._

"One of us has to be," she said. 


	2. The Flight of the Oshelmingas

Yes, don't worry, it is the same story which began with Celeborn and Galadriel talking, and there will be more elves very soon. But for now, a quick change of scene to the Northernmost fields of Rohan.... 

************************************* 

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 2 

************************************* 

Oswy bent low over Peada's back, urging him on. The gelding's paces were ragged and his neck lathered. Ahead of Oswy his mother's great stallion still tore up the grass. Leofwyn did not look back, but held tight to five year old Gytha who sat before her, while in her pannier the baby wailed with fear. Behind Oswy, Oshelm and Cyn galloped, turning in their saddles to vainly waste arrows on the vile creatures who followed. 

_No, not waste. Let us take as many of them as we can, if that's all we do before we die._

They were driven further from the Wolds - the last hill giving way to meadow. A long flat, empty plain in which there was no place to hide, no place even to stand and fight. Looking ahead, Oswy's heart seemed to still, so that he wished he could scream like the baby. On the right hand, Anduin lay, deep and impassible. On the left a wide barrenness rose up to the mountains, where even now the swiftest of the warg-riders were drawing level with Leofwyn's steed. And ahead - golden and drowsy with enchantment, like honey on a fly-trap - stood the first slender trees of the Sorcerous Wood. 

"They are falling away!" Cyn shouted suddenly. "The host turns back towards Mirkwood." 

"The main host turns away," Oshelm corrected grimly, the mask of his helmet gilded by faint sunlight, "But enough follow for our doom. Be ware!" 

Peada's hooves thundered against turf. The scent of horse-sweat was heavy in the air, but a reek came from the orcs - the stench of old blood and ordure. Leofwyn's horse tossed his head and neighed loud at the smell, and in reply, the Wargs gave tongue, their howling piercing Oswy's chest with a terror he despised in himself. "Where are we going?" he shouted, "There is nowhere to go!" 

"Under the trees!" 

A black fletched arrow came humming, hornet like, to sting Peada's flank, leaving a long shallow cut. The horse turned toward the river, and Oswy wrestled his head round once more to face the Golden Wood. Leofwyn said nothing, but, dropping her reins, she unshipped the precious shield she carried and held it over the children, riding like an archer. She had a grim look, but would not waste time arguing. 

"Better that we drown," Oswy exclaimed, horrified, "Let us cast ourselves in the river rather. It is less perilous!" 

Oshelm drew level with him, the black horse, Sceadu seeming as contemptuous as its rider. "I will forget you said that, my son. At least among the trees there is cover to fight from. Cast off this despair and learn to be a man." 

_It is not despair,_ Oswy thought, shamed, _Better to die as myself than face whatever dwimmorcraft dwells in there._ But he bent lower and whispered to Peada nevertheless, and, finding fresh strength, the horse leapt forward in a final burst of speed. 

Two outriders of the Warg pack changed course as if avoiding the slender silver birches which were the sentries of the Golden Wood. They turned straight into the path of Leofwyn, bounding towards her, their mouths aslaver, coming between her and the twilight beneath the trees. The orc upon the first leered and brought his scimitar down in a blow to her head, fast as a striking snake. But Leofwyn caught the blow on her shield, and drove the iron-shod rim into his face, before wheeling and falling back. Gytha, who had been screaming, ceased suddenly, her eyes wide, as Cyn spurred past Oswy and Oshelm both to cleave the orc in two. 

_Fell handed!_ Oswy thought, and for a moment he saw clearly the joy and glory in battle of which the bards sang. But Cyn had forgotten the Orc's steed. The huge wolf lunged forward, taking the throat out of Cyn's horse in one bite. Cyn was tossed hard onto the ground. Dazed, he scrambled to his feet even as the wolf raised its streaming mouth from the blood. 

"Daddy!" shouted little Gytha, before Leofwyn put a hand over her mouth, bidding her not distract the warrior with noise. At once all doubt in Oswy's mind was burnt away by rage. He drove Peada straight at the creature, landing a blow to its neck with his long knife. It turned its teeth on him. He saw death, and froze, thoughtless with shock. Then it fell, Cyn's sword through its side, and the world returned to Oswy in a bewildering rush. 

Oshelm was fighting the second, alone. This was no ordinary orc. Taller than Oshelm himself, its brutish form was heavy and its face almost man-like, if men could ever sink so low. Blades rang as it struck out and Oshelm parried, but at the same time the warg it rode growled deep in its throat and jumped, closing its huge maw around Oshelm's leg and dragging him from the saddle. 

"Oshelm!" Cyn and Oswy cried together, rushing the creature. There was a blurred moment of confusion, before Oswy found himself looking down at the corpses with blood up to his wrists. Oshelm lay a little apart. He lifted his helmet off with shaking hands just as Oswy dismounted, running to his father's side. 

The warg's teeth had severed the great vein in Oshelm's thigh. Oswy lifted his father's head into his lap and watched as the light went out of his eyes. "No." he said. 

But Oshelm pressed the hilt of his sword into his son's palm and closed the fingers round it. "You are chief now. I... You did well. Farewell." 

Cyn stood nearby, holding the reins of Sceadu and Peada. His gaze was as empty as Oswy's. But Leofwyn, who had not dismounted, said "There will be time to mourn when the children are safe. You are chief now, Oswy. What do we do?" 

He looked out on the orc force. Even now the two slower wargs were approaching and there were perhaps a score of the great man-like orcs behind them, running as fast as trotting horses. The rider of the closest warg unshipped a bow. Not even the black arrowhead gleamed in the sun. Oswy was afraid of the sorceries of the Golden Wood, but to stay was to die, and he was lord now, responsible for these lives. 

He picked up his father's helmet and vaulted into the saddle. "Into the trees!" 


	3. Into the Trees

************************************* 

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 3 

************************************* 

Arrows followed Oswy as he galloped into the wood. The silver birches, which had been at first slender and widely spaced, grew together, hindering their flight. Now beech and ash began to appear, their boles like the grey pillars of an empty hall. Stands of chestnut looked strange to Oswy's plains-trained eye, as though the branches had been cut and cut again, until a once-single tree had become a nest of small shoots, perfect to snare the feet of horses. 

Distances closed up, and the light dimmed to green. As they slowed, an unearthly silence fell about them. The very trees seemed watchful, thoughtful with some deep pondering beyond the thoughts of men. Behind him Cyn cried out, a harsh sound, suddenly muffled, and birds burst in answer into the sky. 

On the borders, a wolf howled, its call breaking off into whining, and Oswy heard the harsh laughter of orcs. They were following. 

A dread fell on him. Light shone in little golden flecks over his head, dancing in the new green leaves of spring, but shadow was all around him, and the sense of being watched was heavy on him. The grip of his father's sword felt slippery in his wet hands, and the helmet too large, and of a sudden all he desired was to weep. Why was his father not here? He would know what to do, and Oswy did not. 

"Cyn?" he reined in, waiting for the young warrior to come beside him. When it did not happen he turned back, and saw his father's man slumped in the saddle, a black arrow lodged between his shoulders. He must have been hit in the last moment the enemy had them in sight. "Cyn?" Oswy rode back and touched the warrior's arm. Blearily, Cyn raised his head, trying to focus on Oswy's face. 

"Not as bad... not... " 

"Leofwyn!" Oswy called, but she was already there. She looked narrowly at the wound, laid a hand on Cyn's forehead and his throat. 

"_If_ we find somewhere safe, and _if_ the arrow comes out clean, and _soon_, he may live." 

Leaves rustled. The air tasted full of new growth and, as Oswy wondered what to do, the petals of white flowers fell softly about him from the hoar heads of a stand of ancient cherry trees. It felt as if the whole wood was mocking him. 

"We'll climb up." he said, dismounting, "Sending the horses on. Perhaps they will follow them. But even if they don't, they can only climb one or two at a time, and you and I can take them together. Nor can the wargs reach us." 

"That's well," she said, unbuckling the baby's closed basket from her saddle and handing it to him, "Into the cherries then. The scent of blossom may prevent them from smelling us." 

Gytha had already scrambled down, her round face taut with held in tears, her lips pressed firmly together, silent in the face of her father's new battle. She reached up for a handhold, small hand closing on a broken branch, and "Daro!" called a voice at Oswy's shoulder, where he had _known_ they were alone. 

Gytha gave a startled cry. She fell to the ground and curled into a ball there, covering her hands with her face. Oswy spun, and saw, just beyond the reach of a sword, the moving light glimmer on an arrowhead like polished silver, aimed at the centre of his eye. 

* * *

Behind the arrow the archer was little more than guessed shapes in shadow; tall, slender, hooded, and still. Even half glimpsed there was something uncanny about him - a presence, a press of will against Oswy's mind, a suggestion that the trees themselves leaned over to hearken as he spoke. 

"Do off your weapons." The voice was musical but chill, ageless with arrogance, and laden with an accent Oswy could barely understand. He spoke slowly, as if unfamiliar with Westron, and that was good, for Oswy's knowledge of the language was also slight. 

"I do not..." Anger woke in Oswy's heart. He was lord now - albeit lord of a sacked village, leader of children - but his father had given him this sword with his last strength and he was loath to easily part with it. 

"Oswy, please!" Leofa knelt over Cyn protectively, and looked up with resignation. Mindful of her son's dignity she spoke in Rohirric so that the creature who watched their quarrel could at least not understand the words. "He could slay you where you stand. For your bondsman's sake do not anger him." 

"He is but one!" 

"And that is enough." 

Oswy held her gaze for a while, wondering at how small a step it was to go from mother to councillor, but he could not endure the steady regard long. She was right. Sighing, he put the sword and his long knife down on the grass in front of the creature's feet. 

"The Man's sword also." 

Feeling utterly humiliated, Oswy tugged Cyn's blade from its scabbard and placed it with the rest. When he had done so, the archer stepped forward, pinning the weapons under one lightly shod foot. Sunlight filtered through the boughs of the ancient cherries and there was silence for a second, and then a clamour, very close, of orc voices, yelling in agony and fury. Slipping into dreams, Cyn cried out in answer, something of the pain in those screams calling to him. Already his brow was damp with sweat and his face sunken. 

The creature - elf, it must be, Oswy thought - did not stir at the sounds. The stillness in it was like that of the trees. With another Man, even an enemy, Oswy would have begged for help, asked for succour for his wounded. But tales spoke chillingly of the mercy of the Golden Wood. Few were allowed in, and fewer returned, and of those none were unscathed; wrought strange by whatever power dwelt within. There was nothing the elves might bestow that it was good for a mortal man to receive. 

But Gytha did not remember the tales. With a child's desperation and innocence she ran up to the elf and took two handfuls of his cloak, looking up beseechingly. "Please help us! Please help my daddy!" 

The elf's aim had not once wavered from Oswy's face, but now the hooded head tilted, as if listening, and then he took the arrow from the string and replaced it in its quiver. He slung the bow on his back and crouched down, face to face with the little girl. "Boe adar lin dartha i Hîr a Hîril beth," (1) he said, and taking down his hood he showed a face fairer than that of mortal man, with long dark hair and eyes like starlit steel, "Be boe ammen." (2) But he smiled at the child as if she was a rare flower. 

His expression was distantly kind as he turned back to Oswy. "I am Erethôn, march-warden of Lorien. You will come with me." 

"And if I chose not to?" At the high-handed treatment, Oswy's anger flared again and he clenched his fists, thinking that perhaps he could yet fight the creature hand to hand. It was tall, but did not look sturdy. In the corner of his eye, he was aware of a change in the texture of the light - a swift falling of shadows too patterned to be the movement of leaves, and when next he looked three other elves stood in a circle around their small group, bows drawn. 

"That choice is not yours," said Erethôn coldly, "The orcs who pursued you have been slain. Yet I deem you to have news the Lord and Lady must hear. Therefore you will come." He picked up Oswy's weapons and passed them to one of his silent companions. Then he whistled and all three horses trotted up to him as if they had been raised by him from foals. 

"Come, Oswy," Leofa's voice broke into his feeling of betrayal and doom, "What cannot be cured must be endured. Help me set Cyn on Sceadu." 

It was, by the angle of the sun, but an hour after noon, when Oswy looked back in the direction of the free fields of Rohan once more, and with a heavy heart bid them farewell. He did not imagine that he would ever see them again; not at least as a free man, in possession of his own spirit. He wondered once more whether it might not have been better had they thrown themselves into Anduin and so met a clean death, but for Cyn's sake, and for the sake of his daughter, he did not now try to attack the elf who lead them, knowing that while death might release him, it would leave the children all the more unprotected. 

Even discounting their strange guide the path was disquieting. Oswy was used to the open plains, to sky overhead and views for miles. Here among the trees he felt hemmed in. There could be enemies on every side, waiting in ambush, and he could not see them. Ever and anon he would turn, expecting to see his father walking behind him, and the stab of realisation did not grow less each time. 

The air was still, yet sometimes a breeze would come like a sinuous brook through the quiet, and bring the smell of flowers unknown to Man. Then the canopies of the trees would toss with a noise like the sea, and light would whirl dizzying over his head, and he felt more removed from the world at every step, haunted by the sweetness of days and places he had never seen; ages long ago gone to dust. 

As their journey progressed the feeling waxed. The ache of grief was not forgotten, but it was hallowed and made splendid, as - in the hands of a great bard - even lamentation becomes a matter of glory. All things now seemed touched with awe and fear, and Oswy began to percieve each raindrop on the end of a twig as a diamond and each blade of grass as a new creation, each shade of green a new colour, each shape a thing of wonder. There was a power in all things, resting over the whole land like the golden light in Autumn just before a storm, and under that power all things were revealed as stainless and full of wonder. He caught himself wondering if perhaps this holyness which rested over all, was not infact the truth. The truth that underlay all. A truth that sometimes Men were simply too busy to notice. 

The ground fell away into a thickly wooded combe, like a vast bowl. At its lip they paused, and Oswy looked out, seeing, far off, a mighty hill crowned with towering trees, silver barked, bannered and garlended with blossom radient as the sun. It was from them that the unearthly scent flowed, and at the sight of them he felt freed of something, as though the burden of sorrow and responsibility he had been carrying had been eased by other hands than his. 

"What is it?" he said to himself, "What do I feel?" 

Erethôn smiled again his small smile. His slender hand reached up to steady Cyn in the saddle. "You feel the power of the Lady of the Wood," he said. 

And Oswy cursed. He had not, after all, reached some understanding of the nature of purity. He had merely been ensorcelled by the temptress in the centre of the web. Deeply ashamed, he bit his cheek until the blood ran, determined not to be so weak again. 


	4. The Lord of Lorien

************************************* 

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 4 

************************************* 

At the bottom of the combe the travellers came suddenly out of the trees. Here was a broad meadow of green grasses, scattered with purple and white flowers. A golden afternoon lay upon it, and the air was full of the eagerness of springtime. It was yet some way to the paved road which encircled the great hill. As they drew near, Oswy saw that the hill was surrounded by a defensive wall of earth - it too sprinkled over with blooms - and the gate, which faced them, was tall and strong. 

Erethôn knocked. The gate opened silently and closed silently after them. 

Up the hill they climbed, along grassy paths and white stairs of paved stone. There were many folk about; tall, graceful elves with hair like shadow, or - rarely - a radiance of gold. Some regarded them solemnly, and some laughed like giddy youths and ran away. Many songs were on the air, and voices spoke above Oswy in the branches of the trees. Gytha took his hand, but her eyes were bright. Cyn seemed to revive a little and sat straighter in the saddle. 

"Do they fly from tree to tree like birds?" Leofwyn asked, astonished, as curious faces looked down on her from the boughs. 

"We walk, lady," said Erethôn, and his smile broadened, "We are light and the mellyrn are strong. But ai! To have wings. What joy that would be!" And he too burst into song. At the strange words and merry tune Oswy's mind filled with visions of clouds - the splash and spatter of diving into a sunlit cloud, and he found it hard not to smile himself, so strong was the delight. 

On the crown of the hill there lay a green lawn. A fountain played there, all fire and crystal in the afternoon sunlight. With a pitcher of silver, a maiden was drawing water from the stream, her long braids of black hair swinging free. 

"Here you must leave your injured fellow," Erethôn said, and waving a hand he summoned the maiden to him. They spoke a while, her face clouding at his words, then she sped away, swiftly as a startled deer, and he went to lift Cyn down. 

"What are you going to do with him?" Oswy moved to his bondsman's side, forestalling the elf. He had been lulled by all this beauty, but now his suspicions awoke again. 

"He cannot climb the mallorn," said Erethôn, his good humour disappearing. He nodded at the mightiest of trees, whose canopy shaded them all, and Oswy noticed for the first time the ladder that wound about it. Flimsy, it looked to him, and untrustworthy, like the whole land. If he bent his neck back he saw platforms in the branches on either side, or about the trunk, and, above them all, light and airy though it was, what was unmistakably a King's Hall, unbelievably high. 

Dread smote him. Edoras was high enough, but it was at least built on solid stone. In the winds this place must move, must sway underfoot like the deck of a great ship. "I have to go up there?" 

"You must, and he cannot. I have sent to the healers. They will attend him while the Lord and Lady question you. I think he cannot afford to await judgement. Come now." He took Cyn by the arm and waist and lifted the heavy man out of the saddle as lightly as if he were a stripling, laying him down on the grass on his stomach. 

"How much do your healers know about Men?" Leofwyn asked, bluntly. Cyn had not cried out during the move, but his eyes were pinched shut and he was plainly still conscious. Little Gytha fled to his side and crouched there, telling him of what she had seen today, both her hands wrapped around one of his clenched fists. 

"That I know not," Erethôn said, "We have not had many dealings with folk of other kinds, but there _may_ be some among them who remember Men from the Last Alliance, or the War of Wrath." 

"Then I will stay with him," she said, "For I am a healer among my own people, and however much your leeches know, I may be able to instruct them." 

The elf frowned, his steel-grey eyes doubtful. 

"I would not have him suffer and perhaps die among uncaring strangers," she said, a request in her face that softened her proud words. 

"Very well," Erethôn sighed, "Yet I would rather that you, as the leader of your people, spoke for all. You risk much by entrusting the task to a child." 

Oswy's fingers remembered the press of his father's hand, bequeathing him both sword and people at once, and anger boiled up in him at the creature's words. "Leofwyn is my councillor and my mother," he said, "But _I_ am the Lord of this remnant. I am thirteen years old, and, by the reckoning of the Rohirrim, no longer a child. You would do well to remember that." 

A look a little like contempt curled the elf's mouth, but he bowed, "My apologies, Hir-chên.(3) Then it is well. You must come, she may stay." 

"Take Gytha?" Leofwyn whispered, "She should be spared watching me remove the arrow." 

Oswy leaned close and said in the thickest dialect of Wold-rohirric he could muster "She has a chance yet of eluding the gaze of the Sorceress of the Wood. If you are all down here, then perhaps only I will be affected." 

"Oh, my son," Leofwyn said, regretfully, "I wish I had never told you those tales. Oshelm was right; they take away your courage. What have we found here, except courtesy and aid? And the tales are old. Who knows how they may have changed in the telling." She rose and stood before him, and the lines around her eyes quirked a little in a smothered smile. "You are too stubborn and too proud to be ensorcelled by any witch, Oswy. Go now, and be our lord in truth. The valour of Bema go with you." 

His heart was strengthened by her faith in him. He held out a hand to Gytha. "Come on little one. Let the leeches see to your daddy. He will be well. Why don't you come with me, and we'll go and see the White Lady of the Elves." 

* * *

It was a weary climb, and the sun was dipping towards the Western edge of the world before Oswy stepped out into the Hall of the elves. He was briefly very glad of the green and silver walls which enclosed the oval chamber, before they billowed and he saw they were mere curtains and light screens. On one side they had been drawn back, and there was naught but air between himself and the setting sun. The sky seemed so close he might reach up and snag a handful of early stars. Indeed it looked as if someone had already done so, and then scattered them. Lamps of gold and silver were kindling among the treetops below. The wind was fresh, with a hint of snow off the mountains that mingled with the lively smell of the mallorn's yellow blooms. It smelled like adventure, and dangers borne with laughter. Oswy - who had feared for his spirit - was reassured by it. It seemed too bracing for enchantment. 

He took firm hold of Gytha's sleeve to prevent her running to the edge, and made his way at Erethôn's command, through the crowd of other petitioners. Elves stepped aside for them, their frowns turning to wistful pleasure as they looked on Gytha. Oswy held her tighter and breathed in, straightening his back, determined that whatever happened next, he would honour his father by it. 

Set against the bole of the tree - like a high-seat pillar - there were two slight chairs of ash wood. One was empty. In the other there sat not a Lady, but a great Lord. He was clad all in grey, as simply as his woodland archers, but unlike all the dark folk Oswy had yet seen, his long hair was silver as water in sunlight, bright and strange. He handed back a tally to his scribe, with some words of business, and then turned to look on Oswy. Oswy's breath failed as the grave and beautiful face lifted to study him. He saw...he did not know what he saw; the slow-growing life of a tree that had outlived mountains; a shadowed power and quietness that made the other elves look like children. A thousand ages of growth and thought, memory and tragedy, all sharply present and focused on him. 

He had thought to find one kind of magic. He had found another. He did not know whether to be relieved or afraid. 

"Lord Celeborn," Erethôn began, "This boy claims to be the leader of the refugees out of Rohan whom we rescued from orcs on the Southern border. His name is Oswy." 

Awe could not prevent Oswy from bridling at that. Evidently Erethôn had yet to be convinced of Oswy's lordship, and it would not help Oswy's case to be caught gawping like a country boy at his first sight of the Golden Hall of Meduseld. He narrowed his eyes and stood tall. "I am Oswy, son of Oshelm, of the Wolds of Rohan. I and my folk entered your realm against our will, for we were outnumbered and pursued by orcs. My father, Oshelm, died nobly on your borders, defending us from the foe, and my bondsman, Cyn, was sorely wounded. I have with me also my mother, Leofwyn and the girl, Gytha, who is Cyn's child. No trespass was intended. We simply had no-where else to go." 

The Lord Celeborn smiled slightly, "Waes thu hal, Oswy Oshelming," he said in flawless rohirric, "And be comforted. You stand accused of nothing worse than being in need. We do not grudge you that." 

Then he spoke at some length to Erethôn and to another elf, whom Oswy thought might have been among the unspeaking elves who first captured him. Both bowed and left, though the silent one put down a bundle wrapped in green cloth before he departed. 

"I have given orders that your father's body be carried to Caras Galadhon, so it may be accorded whatever honours your people find fit," the Lord said, turning his attention once more to Oswy, "And your wounded companion is even now being tended." He looked at Gytha, who had begun to yawn and rub a small, bloodstained hand across her eyes. That sweetening of expression Oswy had seen in all the elves when they looked on her was even more pronounced in him. "Let the child be taken to her father, that she may see him before she rests." 

This order was not so much to Oswy's mind. He liked not to think of the little girl being escorted alone among these uncanny people. But his mistrust was eased by the way Gytha gratefully laid her head on the shoulder of the lady who came for her. Despite her first sight of orcs, a day of peril, and her father's wound, the little girl seemed happy here. He chose to take it as a good omen. 

"I have sent Erethôn," the Lord continued, "To the remains of your settlement. There may yet be some others of your folk who survived." 

The words brought back to Oswy the bright and hopeful morning in which he had awoken, and crawling out of his tent had seen on the horizon a line of black so dense and thick he could scarcely believe it was made up of living things. He heard again the screams as the torrent of orcs crashed over them all. "Lord, it was an army. I know not how we got out. But there will be no one else left." 

Celeborn rose and walked to the edge of the flet. He balanced there and looked out into the sunset like one who wishes to burn away dark memories. "I have known the destruction of many cities. There is always something to salvage - a babe under an upturned basket, toddlers hidden in a haybarn, children fled to the woods, who perish later, abandoned to starvation. I will not let that happen to the kinsmen of my guest." 

Oswy felt as if the tree beneath him had swayed and tipped him from his feet. What was this kindness? What had happened to the inhuman sorceries of the Golden Wood? "I do not understand," he said, "Why are you doing this?" 

The elvish Lord gave him a look of puzzlement "How could I not?" 

Returning, he threw himself down in his seat, and leaned forward, dark eyes intent. "Now tell me of this army of orcs. Can you give me an estimate of their number and kinds? Were they bound into Rohan, or towards Dol Guldur?" 

"They were bound for Mirkwood," Oswy began. He spoke slowly as his thoughts righted themselves. _Is there no Sorceress then? Is Leofwyn correct, and all the tales false?_ It was strangely reassuring to be standing like a proper leader of men in the middle of a council of war. "My estimate will be wild, but there were at least five thousand. I think many more - at least half of which were great, tall, man-like orcs. There seemed at least a thousand warg-riders, and wagons behind them. All of this in the daytime, when we thought we were safe." 

Three tall elves had stepped forward when Oswy began to speak. They were clad in silver mail, and long white cloaks hung from their shoulders. Their hands rested on axes almost as tall as they. Celeborn looked up at each in turn. "You hear? Saruman has lent aid to his new Master, beyond the strength he has sent against Rohan. It will take them the night to reach Dol Guldur. Once there they must be mustered into companies under Khâmul's command. But it will be done swiftly ere the new orcs begin fighting the old. We can expect the first attack in little over two days." 

Again, the chamber seemed to sway in Oswy's eyes and he gasped. "Saruman has sent forces against Rohan? I must go back. I must go home!" 

"You cannot." 

Whether the Lord read Oswy's confused feelings of vindication and betrayal on his face, or by somehow seeing into his heart, he did not know. But he had not finished reeling from the thought that he was forbidden ever to return to the world of Men - that the tales were true in that at least - before Lord Celeborn had frowned in irritation and elaborated. "You cannot go home," he said, "Because by the time your wounded man is healed, this country will be under siege. Like it or not, Oswy Oshelming, you will have to remain my guest until the paths of the world lie open once more. Or until defeat draws us down into death together." 


	5. Coming to Rest

************************************* 

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 5 

************************************* 

Blood welled and stained the cloth between Leofwyn's fingers. She pressed down hard to stanch the flow, and one of the maidens at her side took hold of her hands and pulled them away. "Let the wound bleed a little, that it may be cleansed from orc filth." 

They had removed Cyn to a white pavilion a short distance from the spring. He had been given a draught of skullcap and vervain, and slept - a limp weight beneath the healer's hands. Leofwyn removed the arrow under the watchful gaze of a slender lady named Aelinoth. It was one of the hardest things she had ever done. The arrowhead had lodged in Cyn's spine, and her hands had tried to tremble as she dug out the point, not knowing what worse damage she was inflicting on him. 

Even now they shook, and she was ashamed of her weakness, but she _needed_ to tend the wounded man - to take the next necessary action, to keep thought away for yet another moment, so that she need not remember that she had not had time even to say farewell to her husband. "It will weaken him too greatly," she said, proud of her steady voice. 

Aelinoth returned, bearing a basin of steaming water in which many herbs floated. She bathed the wound with a healer's dispassionate tenderness and smiled. Her eyes were dark as dawn, and as full of mysteries. "Less so than the fever which will come if the foulness is not washed out," she said, "Have you not dealt with orc-arrows before?" 

"I have not," Leofwyn admitted. Feeling alone and rather insignificant amongst these fair, capable people, she stared at the fresh green grass that carpeted the healer's tent. 

"Nor have I dealt with Men before," Aelinoth offered gently. Reaching out, the elf-lady touched Leofwyn's sleeve in a brief gesture of comfort. Leofwyn saw that the hands of woman and elf were alike stained with the badge of a shared craft; the blood of the man they worked to heal. "So I will heed your wisdom," Aelinoth said, "And bind the wound sooner than I would with our own folk." 

"That is well," looking up, Leofwyn found herself almost undone by the look of kindness on the elf-woman's face. _I am among friends_ she thought briefly, and at the illusion of safety, a great cry of grief threatened to break free from her. But she would not let it. Despite her reassurances to Oswy, she was not yet sure if she could afford to be weak in front of these people. "I would have him clean and bound before his daughter returns. Let the child see him resting well and she will sleep the better herself." 

She took a clean cloth and pressed it once more to Cyn's back as the maiden lifted Cyn's shoulders with astonishing strength for one so lithe, and Aelinoth swiftly and deftly bandaged the wound. Then between them they laid the unconscious man down on a mattress stuffed with yarrow and green plants, where his every movement would crush the herbs against him, and brighten the air with their scent. 

There was no more to do. Whether he lived or died was no longer in her hands. Standing up, a great emptiness of purpose came over her, and she knew not whether she wanted to weep, or to sleep like Cyn and not to wake until the world was made new. But such luxuries were not permitted to mothers like herself. She still had the babe to clean and feed. Looking about her for the baby's basket, she shook her hands, and the red blood dripped onto the green grass, the colours glowing together, like embers in the growing dark. 

Baby Scild had not cried this long time. Leofwyn turned from one worry to the next - surely he should be bawling by now? And where was the basket? Fear pierced her like an arrow, ebbed when she saw it, and rose to panic when she looked inside and found it empty. All the tales about the Golden Wood swarmed about her head - was it not well known that the elves stole human babes for some vile purpose of their own? Now the looks of enchantment she had seen on their faces as they gazed on Gytha took on a more sinister cast. "Aelinoth," she demanded, voice tight in her throat, "Where is my child?" 

"Rian took him," Aelinoth said, her brow creased, "To play in the fountain. You were busy. He needed distraction. Was this not right?" 

"You took a ten month old to play in a fountain?!" 

"Rian is with him," Aelinoth repeated, softly, and her eyes held no understanding of why Leofwyn was suddenly so furious. It was as well the border guard had taken their weapons, Leofwyn thought, her hands clenching, or more blood than Cyn's would be shed here tonight. But then the elf-woman's face eased, and she smiled over Leofwyn's shoulder. "See, they return." 

It was a beautiful picture. Rian was one of the few fair-haired elves, and her loose locks were the same pale wheat as Scild's baby curls. He lay smiling in her arms, playing with the trailing silver-embroidered cuff which wrapped around him. She smiled too, a look of such tenderness it made Leofwyn's blood boil. Sprinting the short distance between them, Leofwyn reached out for her child, and Rian recoiled, clear eyes narrowing. "You are all blood." 

"Give me my baby." 

"Should you not wash first?" Leofwyn was beyond reckoning what anxiety passed over the elf's face, beyond weighing up whether she was trapped in some tragic tale, or just confronted with an over helpful maid who knew nothing of humans. She might have come to blows, but that a voice, deep and musical spoke behind her: 

"Rian, would you play with a bear cub in front of its den? Give the child back to his mother." 

"Lady Galadriel!" Rian's eyes widened, and gently, but promptly, she handed Scild back to Leofwyn, who held him close, her racing heart slowing as she felt the warm curve of his cheek against hers. 

One moment, she gave herself to recover, and then she turned to face her rescuer; Galadriel, the Sorceress of the Wood. 

Tales had not exaggerated the beauty of the Lady Galadriel. But it seemed to Leofwyn that it was a beauty like that of the mountains or the sky. An innocent beauty. If it smote the hearts of men it would do so as dawn over the trees, as a fair sunrise over a free land. Unattainable, unless a man might possess the light itself. Her golden hair, shining as it was, was simply braided, and her white dress was modest, without ornament but for a girdle wrought of silver leaves. Her gaze was heavy on Leofwyn's face, the gaze not of a witch, but of a Queen, patient and kind. 

"Welcome, Leofwyn daughter of Leofgar," she said, and smiled gently. "And forgive Rian her concern for your son. The love of children is strong with us, yet year by year we have fewer to care for. If we are over eager to tend yours it is because we remember our own, grown and gone these several thousand years. It will not happen again, unless by your word." 

"I thank you," Leofwyn said, relief and too much loss stopping her mouth. She did not want to feel sympathy, or to see before her the darkness of an unending life barren as the rocks. She had problems enough of her own. Feeling rustic and inadequate would not do. She also was a Lady, and a leader of men. "Our debt to you cannot be counted or repaid," she said formally. "Where we looked to find peril we have found friendship beyond expectation." 

Then she frowned, because, softly treading out of the gathering gloom came an elf-woman with Gytha in her arms. The child's small hands were locked around the maid's white neck and the grubby blonde head lay on a smooth shoulder, fast asleep. 

"Oft it is so," said Galadriel, and Leofwyn wondered if she struggled not to look at the little girl, "For many and strange are the chances of the world, and not all appearances disclose the truth, as we have learned to our cost." Then, stepping forward, she caught Leofwyn's eyes and held them. Fear settled on Leofwyn like snow. Was some spell, after all, being laid upon her? Was this the point where she would forget who she was, only to wake on the edge of the wood, childless? Exposed before the elf-Lady's penetrating gaze, she fought the influence breathlessly, wrenched her face aside. 

The Lady smiled at her once more. "Be at peace, Leofwyn," she said, sympathetically, "And do not speak of debt. The chance guest can be the most welcome. No harm will come to you or yours here. I swear it." 

Placed beside her father, Gytha woke only long enough to snuggle into his side. Cyn's drugged sleep must have been lightening. Unconsciously he brought his arm around his daughter and laid his hand on her head. A small triumph at the end of a day of disaster. Forcing the tears away, Leofwyn spread the cover over them both. 

Evening painted all things with blue shadow. Lights were kindled in the trees, and some of the lady's maidens had brought lamps to set on stands throughout the large healer's pavilion. Looking at it now, Leofwyn saw it could not have been set up entirely for Cyn's benefit - there was space for a hundred wounded men. Others of the handmaids had brought linen and herbs. They moved purposefully, stacking their burdens, lighting small braziers of charcoal to prepare remedies, singing softly over the medicines. This was a war hospital, being assembled with quiet efficiency around her. 

At that moment Oswy returned, clutching a green-wrapped bundle from which the hilts of their two swords protruded. "Mother!" he cried, his face lightening at the sight of her, "I...oh!" Like a shying horse he stopped and gaped at the Lady of the Wood. Leofwyn wondered if she would have to strike or rebuke him, but after a second he closed his mouth and essayed a small bow, and a painfully correct "My Lady." 

The sadness left the Lady Galadriel's eyes, and though she returned the bow with grave courtesy, Leofwyn could see, woman to woman, that she was both charmed and amused. "Greetings Oswy Oshelming," she said, her voice warm, "In this place you may lay down for a while the burden for which you were not prepared. Perhaps we will speak again another day, but for now, go. Find rest." 

Oswy blushed furiously red up to the roots of his oak-brown hair, and Leofwyn felt another pang. Even if the Lady and her land were as wholly innocent as they seemed, might he not still lose his heart to her and be hurt, even in the midst of all his grief. 

Stepping out of the faint moonlight of the glade beneath the great mallorn, came a tall elf, grey and silver as the dusk. He drew the Lady aside, and they spoke together in low voices, the beauty of the elvish language full of tension and warning. Then, in an ageworn gesture of tenderness, the Lady laid her hand in the hand of this twilight Lord. They turned away together. 

Servants came and lead Oswy and Leofwyn to a small tent further under the cover of the wood, where they found hot water waiting for them, a change of clothes, and food on wooden dishes; roughly served but finer than anything they had eaten even in Meduseld. They ate and washed in relay, one of them with Cyn at all times. Then Leofwyn moved their bedding into the Healer's pavilion, on either side of the mattress where the injured man and his daughter lay. She said nothing of her thoughts to Oswy, but took one of the swords from the bundle, just in case. If elf or elf-maiden came to take the children while she slept, they would feel her steel. 

Stars shone among the branches, and the thin wind hissed in the litter of golden leaves outside, scattering them into the pavilion, over the sleepers and the sweet grass and clover on which Leofwyn lay, but the elves had provided them with many warm furs and blankets, and she curled up thankfully, trying not to think of Oshelm. 

"So that is the Sorceress of the Golden Wood," said Oswy thoughtfully beside her, "She is not what I expected." 

It did not, Leofwyn thought, sound like the excited praise of lovestruck youth. Somewhat relieved, she said "Oh?" 

"I didn't think the Sorceress would be a wife." 

Leofwyn turned over, leaves rustling and crackling beneath her. She thought of the two stately figures walking away hand in hand; the Lady saying she had grown up children. _A wife and mother_ she thought, a little amazed herself, _It's true the tales never mention that._ But then bards rarely did think of such things as important. 

The ground smelled of rain and growth, and the movement of the small wind was soothing in her hair. Scild was all knees and elbows at her side, his baby-snore a comfortable sound. "I think your virtue is safe enough," she said wryly, "Indeed I think little of this land is what we expected. Have you seen that they are preparing for war?" 

"The orcs who overran us are coming against them," Oswy said drowsily, "We cannot leave until they are defeated." 

She wondered how he could be so close to sleep, after the nightmare of this morning, but was glad of it. "We must see what we can do to help," she said, "I like not being in their debt." 

"Hm..." said Oswy, and dozed off. She marvelled at him for a moment, listening to his quiet breathing. Then the sigh of the trees, the voice of the distant stream and the gentle songs of the Healers, at work into the night, lulled her. Her grief was set aside and her suspicions stilled. She slept. 


	6. It Begins

************************************* 

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 6 

************************************* 

Erethon felt it as soon as he set foot outside the borders of Lothlorien. It was as though the bright stars sickened and the sky lowered, threatening. Looking up he saw indeed how grey vapour curled above the darkened trees of Eryn Fuin, lit from beneath by the never quenched furnaces of Dol Guldur. Even over the long miles of tumbled hills between Lorien and the Wolds of Rohan the night air spoke of mortality and decay. 

In Lorien the grass and trees, the stones and water, were singing with the voices elves had given them - a song that had remained unchanged since the before the first sunrise. But here the refrain was of Men - brief, swiftly grasped, soon gone - and Erethon felt out of key with the melody of the world. 

He spoke softly to the two horses who accompanied him. They did not seem to mind the change of air and were tossing their heads, delighted with the space and the chance to run. Leaping onto the back of the grey, Erethon let them have their wish, leaning close to the pale mane as they galloped together through the weary moonlight. Though he had strung his bow and kept it in hand he sensed nothing ill near him. Nor did he catch sight or sound of any good beast, whether horse or herd of Rohan, or white owl hunting. The hills seemed scoured and silent, and Ithil's pallid glow shone on a great emptiness. Only the grass whispered as the cold wind hissed over the turf. 

The night hours passed, and in the East the sky became as bone. He smelled the chill freshness of dew, but over it and through it, discordant as voices shrieking, the scents of cold ash and spilled gore, of ordure and orcs. The feel of the din-horde was greasy over the green pastures, like a spill of tar. Dawn showed him a thin trail of smoke against a citrine sky, and rags of tents, and bodies of both men and orcs littered like strange leaves over the sward. 

A mile later, and the scent came to the horses. He felt them balk, and, pitying them, dismounted, bidding them to remain within calling distance. So it was that he came to the ruin of the people of Oshelm on foot, and trod lightly over ground torn and muddied with blood. The first corpse of Man he came seemed at first a rock - it was the wrong _shape_ for anything living, and rust brown as the earth. But then he saw that the legs had been cleaved through and lay a little apart. One arm was outstretched and the other severed. The blond hair was dark with foulness, but the eyes were open. At the sight of them Erethon felt _di-nguruthos_; overwhelmed by the dread and horror of death. 

Where had the light gone out of those dead eyes? Not to Mandos, not to any place that elves understood. It had gone utterly beyond the world. An unnatural and uncanny fate that made his skin creep over his bones. 

He could not force himself to go closer, but edged around the thing to check the next, and the next, the horror mounting as he found maidens disembowelled, beheaded infants, trampled babes. His chest began to hurt with the fear of it, the pain and the waste, and he wished he could sing for them, but he knew none of the sagas of Rohan. At last, when it became unbearable, he found himself chanting the Lay of Leithian. At least Luthien of all elves had travelled where mortals go in death, and returned, and been not afraid. 

The words strengthened him, and as the light broadened and clouds rode up the morning from the North, his voice also swelled, filling the emptiness with a tale of victory beyond the grave. He let the final words linger on his tongue before hope gave place to silence once more. 

"Please...someone." 

There was a tumbled tent nearby, a swathe of half-burnt canvas over a lump that moved. He dashed to it, caught the corner and flung the material aside. And then recoiled. There lay a boy little older than Oswy. His hair was copper-bright and his face all freckles. Red rimmed, narrowed eyes sought Erethon's face with desperation. His bared teeth ground together with pain. A long knife lay beside him, and with both hands he was holding his own entrails where they spilled from a ragged wound in his belly. Tears leaked from the corner of his eyes. "I'm thirsty." 

Erethon unslung his water bag and cradling the boy's head gave him to drink, carefully. The child's skin was clammy and cold, his sweat soaked hair like river weeds against Erethon's shoulder. He could feel in the very air the boy breathed out the taint of death, inescapable. But not quick. He would linger in torment first, some days. 

"Have you ...come to help me?" The boy gasped, and water ran over his hands from the rent tatters of his guts. 

Put him on a horse and he would die more swiftly and in greater pain. Even if Erethon could construct a litter, he would but die in it before they reached the wood. _So this is the mercy I was sent to bring,_ Erethon thought, bowing to the necessity of it. "Yes," he said. 

"What are you?" 

Erethon stepped back and took an arrow from his quiver. "I am a follower of Lord Tauron," he said, truthfully enough, "Whom you call Bema. And there is only one thing left that I can do for you." He nocked the arrow and drew. 

The boy's eyes widened. Then he nodded, pressing his mouth closed to stop the lip from trembling. He closed his eyes, and Erethon shot him cleanly through the forehead, turning away so he did not have to watch as the spirit fled. 

"Ai!" he said to the silent hills, "Ai, Elbereth!" He covered his face with his hands and stood as one stunned. 

How long he was still, he knew not, but the sun was lowering when he stirred again. Now he made one last circuit to be sure he had not overlooked any other survivor, and when that was done he hardened himself to pick up the bodies and place them on a pyre made from the peat they had cut for their fires and the poles of their tents. 

Once the blaze was lit he went over the ground again and gathered every discarded weapon he could find. Lorien would need these gleaned arrows. The smiths could melt and reforge the orc scimitars. Even the eating-knives of dead children could be turned to a new purpose in the defence of Erethon's land. Let Rohan contribute these things it no longer needed. No other help would come to Lorien from the old alliances or the hands of Men. 

_Not even death would they give us, if our positions were reversed,_ he thought, and recognized the bitterness that came with too much grief. 

At last he whistled for the horses, grateful for the pleasure drawn in every line of them - their day had clearly been to their liking. Dividing the weapons into four piles, Erethon fashioned large bags from the tent canvas and slung them over the horses' willing backs, careful to lade the weight evenly, and pack the sacks as smooth as he might. "We will go slower on the return," he said, giving each an apple, "Come, my friends, let us go home." 

They walked through a grey evening. The lowering clouds set in and a fine drizzle swept out of the west, smelling of smoke and iron. Night came without stars. 

Far off, a wolf voice cried and its pack answered in clamour. Erethon had been looking about for a place to camp, so that the horses could rest, but now his heart fell, and a sense of doom assailed him. Red were the tongues of fire in Eryn Fuin. 

The horses' ears laid back, and their eyes showed white in the darkness. 

"We must not linger here," Erethon told them, and ran. They kept pace, trotting beside him, the sacks of weapons slapping against their flanks. 

Thus the night passed, and he saw nothing, but the sense of threat grew. 

Morning dawned grudgingly, little more than a lightening of the heavy black cloud, except over Lorien. Barely more than a league away, and surrounded by drabness, the golden wood lay under a sky of rain-washed blue, the very _rightness_ of it refreshing him more than rest or food. Yet his back ached with tension, expecting a blow, and his breath came hard, so fierce was the warning on him. 

One moment he looked back to the long drab plains and the darkness that was Mirkwood. The shadow moved and boiled, and a great army of orcs came pouring forth from beneath the twisted branches. Harsh voices yammered, whips cracked, and a score of great wagons crawled forward. Wargs and warg riders howled about them, bearing black banners that hung heavily, as though they were already soaked in gore. 

As they approached Anduin the orcs caught sight of Erethon watching them. A great laughter and cursing went up. Then they began to throw down the sections of what they had brought in the wagons - great pontoons. They were bridging the river. 

Erethon leapt on a horse and set his heels to its flanks. They thundered across the last miles and drew up blown and panting only when Erethon's fellow guards dropped out of the trees to intercept him. He threw the sacks of weapons on the ground and caught hold of the fastest runner in his company. 

"Tell the Lord: They are coming. And there are many of them." 


	7. Testing the Wards

* * *

The tree shuddered beneath him as orcs hewed it. Erethon shot his last arrow through their leader's eye, unsheathed his knives and ran, squirrel like, along the bough, to leap into a beech further inside Lorien's borders. At once the din-horde pursued him; their battle lines turned ragged by the cramped spaces, until they were no more an army, just a large number of orcs, each one walking in solitude. Two passed below him, quarrelling in their filthy voices. He leapt down, cut their throats, and was hidden in the trees once more before their shrieking could bring reinforcements. 

Around him, he was aware of his company, flitting through the trees like silent shadows - dropping down to kill, disappearing again before they alike could be threatened. Already the orcs were in a fury with frustration and fear. No match for elves in a wood. 

Erethon worked his way back to the borders, pulling the arrows from orc corpses while here and there, invisible in the leaves, an elf-voice would call out over the clamour and the tide of attackers would turn, making a futile search for the singer. 

When his quiver was full and his belt could hold no more he turned back, just in time to hear a roar go up and a yell of orcish laughter. Before him one of the cherry-trees caught in flames, blossom flying up like sparks, but it was not the tree's destruction that pleased the orcs so well. They had dragged an elf from the burning canopy. He, doused in oil, burnt also, to the orcs great amusement. 

"Ithildir!" Erethon cried, and, forgetting caution, he raced to his fellow's aid. Others of his company were doing the same and a great number of orcs came pouring out of the woods, attracted by the noise. It was pitched battle then, all tactics forgotten as he shot shaft after shaft. He carved a path to Ithildir's side and flung his cloak around the young archer. Relief touched him briefly when he knew the elfling would live, but he could not help realizing how dearly bought this victory was. Already he was once more without arrows, and the orcs had regrouped and surrounded him. 

His company harried them, but the orcs had now learned better than to follow the taunting voices. They kept together, a great pack of swarthy Mordor orcs, with here and there the pallid, cats-eyed, Moria goblins among them. 

Setting his back to a tree, the swathed form of Ithildir at his feet, Erethon laughed and gave himself over to the joy of battle as they came at him. His long knives were wet, his hands sticky, his arms black up to the elbow. Orcs fell as his company fired on them from the treetops, but there were simply not enough elves or enough arrows. 

Just when he had opened his mouth to begin singing his death-song, a horn sounded from beyond Nimrodel and there came running, like a host of the Elder days, many Galadhrim in armour, lead by a warrior with a cloak white as cloud, wielding an axe inlaid with gold which flashed eagerly in the pale spring sunshine. Merethir, of Celeborn's household, who had come with the Lord out of Ost-in-Edhil, where together they had fought against Sauron the Deceiver face to face. 

The orcs cried out in dismay, but Erethon's company was filled with hope, and surging forward, gleaning arrows all the way, the two elf forces trapped and destroyed the orcs between them. 

"Well met, Guardian," said the white cloaked lord once the last of the din-horde lay in pieces at his feet, "Not late I hope?" 

"You come in very fair time, my lord," Erethon cried, smiling. "Very fair time indeed." 

* * *

From the high talan in Caras Galadhon Celeborn looked out and beheld from afar the burnings and the ooze of darkness beneath the leaves where orcs forced their way into his forest. 

"It looks worse than it is," said Calandil, stepping up beside him, "They have no wood-lore at all. All along the East border they venture in, blunder about, and we pick them off as easily as spearing fish in a millpond. Before another hour is passed they will be nothing more than soil under the roots of your trees." 

In the South, where he had sent Merethir, a line of silver gleamed as though Anduin himself had risen to crash upon the glam-hoth. All was hopeful, and yet Celeborn's palms itched for the feel of a weapon, and it irked him to stand here, letting others take the risks. Glancing sidelong at Calandil, he knew that his old friend was more than aware of this, and the look of sympathy was more than he could take. "You stink," he said. 

Calandil laughed. He pushed back one of his many gold-tipped braids, leaving a smudge of black blood on his cheek. "Aye, as a perfume, better roll in cowpats than touch an orc...What troubles you?" 

"Look." 

The braying of black horns sounded out and in the East, all along the river, single orcs and bands of three or five began spilling out from under the eaves of Lorien, joining the larger host which wound northwards like a poisonous snake, ever touching the borders and then drawing away. 

"They test us," Calandil said. His slate-blue eyes, so like those of Daeron, narrowed as he understood the pattern, "They seek to find a gap." 

"And in the seeking they keep our forces spread and diffuse, so that the greater burden lies on my Lady - to maintain the wards at all points. I like it not." 

"No more did Thingol, when Melian bore the brunt of defending us," said Calandil, glad youth in his face as memory took him back to a more wondrous world. Thinking of Elu Thingol's storms of sudden anger - which broke like thunder and left the air refreshed behind them - Celeborn shared a smile with his friend. There were few now left who remembered King Elwë in all his glory, as a beloved kinsman, not just as a figure of dark justice in an ancient tale. 

"He was right to mislike it." Celeborn said, "Too greatly Doriath relied on Melian, so that when her strength was withdrawn from us, we fell. I have sent Tasariel and her company to follow the host. The orcs will not find a hand's breadth of this border where we depend on magic alone. Perhaps if they believe us to be defended by arms at all points they will try another tactic." 

"Am I to join Tasariel?" 

"No. She and Haldir's archers will have to be enough. I need you here in case this is but a feint. Any frontal assault will come here, in the East." 

"Then I will return to my wing and be sure they are ready." Calandil turned, the sweeping lift of his cloak and the glint and ring of his ornamented braids like a repeated character in the writing of Celeborn's life - each iteration unique, but the meaning at all times the same. It was good, in this changing world, to have something that altered not. 

As Calandil descended, Celeborn walked over to the edge of the talan and looked almost straight down. There, far below, was the smooth shadowed bowl of the mirror glade, the mirror itself like a fallen jewel glimmering. Beside the mirror Galadriel sat, her hands in her lap, her back very straight. He thought her eyes were closed until she tilted her head and looked up at him - a glance as sharp and delightful as cold water on a hot day. 

_Do you not have work?_ She chided him in jest. _Why are you idling?_

_It's said that to gaze on a thing of beauty is refreshment to the spirit. So I am not idling. I strengthen my faer by looking upon you. How hold the wards?_

The touch of her mind drew away. If he followed he could sense Lorien - every flower, every glade, every hind that lifted a startled head to snuff the wind. Running through the whole country, as softly as fallen rain, flowed the golden power of Galadriel. With that influence, but brighter, stranger, and to his mind less trustworthy, twined the strength and white brilliance of Nenya. 

At the edges of Lorien these powers merely whispered, telling of what had crossed into the land, but a mile within they coalesced together into an invisible barrier. Orcs, lured into the strip of woodland outside the barrier, were unable to breach that ring of will, and so remained helplessly within the outer woods, waiting to be picked off by the March-Wardens. 

_The wards hold well,_ Galadriel said, a hidden smile easing her tight-pressed mouth, _And will continue so. That is as long as you do not make a practice of distracting me._

He smirked. _When the time comes I will distract you well enough._

A small flicker of unvoiced laughter quivered the leaves above his head. _You are such a fool, my husband. Why did I ever marry you?_

_That,_ he said, turning back to the chaos of messengers and the grim faces of his scribes. There was still no news from Haldir in the North. _That I shall never know._

* * *

The sun had lowered now behind Caradhras, and the horn of the mountain was russet and madder red in her departing beams. Mallorn blossom tossed against a deepening sky as Haldir looked out and saw the orcs approaching, like a tide of thrice burnt oil spreading over water. 

Mist strayed over the valley of Nimrodel. Quiet in the silvering dusk, the voice of the waters sang of love and hope and a far off meeting that Haldir knew had never in truth come to pass. Tonight it seemed an ill omen - the song of a maiden cheated of her dreams - just as time cheated the elves and stole from them everything for which they strove. 

"But not yet," he said to himself, a whisper of denial towards the orcs and their Master, "You shall not take Lorien from us yet. Not if my hand can prevent it." 

"Haldir!" The tree swayed slightly as Orophin swung up to stand beside his brother, laughing, "Tasariel comes, and Ai! the banners and the horns and the evening light on their armour - it is like a tale by the fire wrought in life! How we will sing of this!" 

Childlike Orophin seemed at times, Haldir thought, and indeed he was too young to have yet seen pitched battle. _Childlike, I hope he remains. For a short time._ But the wish seemed little likely to be satisfied. He set the regret aside, telling himself to be content if his brothers both survived this, however their innocence might be lost. "I will hear no song before yours," he said, pledging the words against an uncertain future. 

* * *

Tasariel's axe fouled in a shield. She dropped it and swept out her sword, but at the very moment when she was unarmed two orcs leapt upon her. She jammed the quillions of her sword into the belly of the first and tensed, hoping that her abused armour and bruised ribs would absorb the blow of the second. But the stroke went wild and the goblin fell, a long arrow neatly through the centre of its eye. Tasariel looked up and met the gaze of Haldir, now but a tall shadow against a sky full of stars. 

"March warden," she bowed slightly in thanks. 

Haldir's head raised. "Ware! Behind you," and he disappeared again, seeking more arrows. 

* * *

Thus the weary night passed, and between them Tasariel's warriors and Haldir's archers drove the enemy west and then south along the fences of Moria. Many orcs were slain, trapped between the wood and the crags of the Misty Mountains. But there, where the fighting was fierce, many elves fell also. 

"Too many," said Haldir and clasped his brother's shoulder as Orophin stood stunned, looking at the dead faces of friends whom he had thought to have beside him for as long as the world should endure. "See to it that you do not join them." 

"I cannot..." Orophin looked upon Haldir with eyes as unquiet as the sea. Then he gave a mute, numb nod. 

"You will sing this battle yet, my brother. You will sing for those who have been silenced." 

But Orophin shook his head. "No. Haldir I cannot. I...just leave me be." 

* * *

At Silverlode the orc army hewed down trees and flung them over the river, crossing it in speed. They paid very dearly for that timber. So much so that when they had gone over they came no longer even within bowshot of the trees but passed southward. Hugging the contours of Lorien they kept just beyond the archers' range, as if goading the elves to come forth and do battle in the plain. 

"Do we let them go?" Haldir asked, as they rested for a moment beneath the glossy crown of an ancient holly. 

"I know not," said Tasariel and whistled tunefully. At the bright notes a blackbird came fluttering from its nest and alighted by the elf-warrior's stained hand. It cocked its head and fixed one gold rimmed eye on her face. "My friend," she said to it, "Fly to Caras Galadhon and tell the Lord that the orc army departs towards Rohan. Are we to pursue them?" 

The bird's flight made a brave picture against a dawn sky of palest yellow. Outriders of Tasariel's wing kept pace with the orc host, harrying them still if they came too close, but Tasariel and Haldir breathed deeply of the sudden quiet. 

"Now we have time to listen to the grass," Haldir said, "I would send my brother back with an escort for those who have been injured. Rumil weathers this well, but Orophin..." he sighed, "He is very young." 

"Then by all means," Tasariel took off her helmet and shook out the long fall of her dark hair, "Not all neri are made to be warriors, just as not all nissi are formed for the arts of peace." She laughed ruefully, "I speak as one who knows! Let him go to the healers then, and take Death itself as his enemy. He will not be less honoured for it." 

So Orophin passed back though the protective spells that girdled Lorien with enchantment. There he was met by maidens bearing litters in which to carry those who were most grievously hurt, and after tending those whose wounds were slight, they departed for the healers' pavilion in the city. 

But Haldir and Tasariel stood yet a while under the holly, and at length the bird returned, singing. 

"Good," said Tasariel and unbuckled the latches of her mail, letting it fall with great content, "The Lord says not to pursue them - and I say aye to that. Let them go. We have at least thinned their forest, and earned some rest before the next assault." She smiled, "Will you drink with me to our first victory, Haldir?" 

"I will." But in his mind, Haldir saw the orc host pass in fury and trampling over the long meadows of the Wold, coming on the unsuspecting Men there in all the stored wrath and humiliation of defeat. "What of Rohan?" he asked. 

"What of them?" Tasariel shrugged, "Never have they sought our friendship. Little, I deem, would they want our protection. Let Rohan worry about Rohan. Or at the very best let the Lord and Lady worry about them. Your hands and mine are full enough." 

Haldir spared a thought for the little Ringbearer, and for Aragorn son of Arathorn. He wondered briefly what impact this extra army of the foe would have on them. But Tasariel was right. Lorien could not fight the battles of all Middle Earth. They had repelled only the first questing finger of Dol Guldur. It remained to be seen whether they had strength enough to withstand the full blow. 

* * *

Author's note: Some people have thought that in introducing a female war-leader into the story I am imposing my own 21st century views on Tolkien's universe. In fact Tasariel is in here because of what Tolkien himself said in his essay 'Laws and Customs of the Eldar', which you can find in the 'Morgoth's Ring' volume of the 'History of Middle Earth' books. 

In this essay Tolkien says "In all such things not concerned with the bringing forth of children, the neri and nissi (that is, the men and women) of the Eldar are equal... There are no matters which among the Eldar only a ner can think or do, or others with which only a nis is concerned." 

He goes on to say that it often happens _as a matter of preference_ that elf men prefer to fight and elf women prefer to be healers, but this is entirely a matter of personal preference, and their society does _not_ force this on them because of their gender. (The one exception to this absolute lack of sexism is that (among the Noldor) male elves are not permitted to make Lembas). So, although Tasariel may be unusual in prefering warfare as her mission in life, her existance still springs entirely from Tolkien's own words ;) 


	8. New Understandings

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 8. New Understandings. 

* * *

Behind Leofwyn a keening wail went up, piercing the lulling songs of the healers with the sound of desolation. She rose and turned, the basin of cold water she had brought to soothe the burnt elf clutched to her chest. By a newly arrived litter one of the ladies of the healers knelt with her arms about the form of a grievously wounded elf who had arrived too late. Even from across the clearing Leofwyn could see his staring, lifeless eyes and the limp roll of his head against the maiden's shoulder. Her hands were tangled in his hair, her own head thrown back as she gave voice to that great cry of denial and loss. 

At the sound of it Leofwyn's arms shook, so that the water spilled over her bowl, down her skirts, spattering over her feet and her patient and over Oswy who worked by her side. "Mother?" he said, but she could not speak in return. Her hands, that had been so capable, that had washed and arrayed Oshelm for burial and calmly laid the first stone of his cairn, grew nerveless. The bowl fell from them and rolled away. 

Gytha took one look at her face and scampered after it, thinking she grieved over the dropped basin, "I will get it! Look I have it, here it is!" and the child's lack of understanding was a bitter barb to the pain of Oshelm's death now come on her irresistibly, summoned by the elvish lament. 

She found herself on her knees, the world gone black around her, only partly aware that her hands were over her face. Her back shuddered but no tears would come. Oswy was at her side, frightened by her weakness, not knowing whether to touch her or not. The sound of lamentation ceased. Leofwyn looked up wildly, wondering who had stopped the note her soul was singing, and met the gaze of the bereaved maiden with a shock of agony and kinship. 

"They rise in glory like hawks in the morning sky," the elf-woman said, her voice thin from keening, "And our hearts exult at them. And then," she bared her teeth like one in mortal pain, "And then they are gone and we are forever alone... Oh, my Barandir!" She closed her eyes and began to rock, the body in her arms like a restive child she sang to sleep. Aelinoth went to her side, and a tall young elf whose face was all angles leaned down to place a hesitant hand on her shoulder. 

_Oshelm!_ it was as if something had been unlocked in Leofwyn. At last the tears came like a wash of blood from a poisoned wound, cleansing her even as it made her shake with weakness. Then a hand caught her under her elbow and an arm went about her back. She smelled the marigolds of burn-salve and the earthy greenness of comfrey. "Come, Lady, come away from here and grieve. Others will work. You have been brave long enough." 

There was a spill of golden hair across her cheek and the press of silk. She looked up and was astonished to see sorrow and sympathy in the eyes of Rian, whom she had all but accused of trying to steal her babe. "Come," Rian said again, gently, "This is no place for you now, let me bring you where you can rest and take wine and weep your fill." 

She could do no more than nod and rise shakily, leaning on the elf's narrow, strong shoulder. Yet even in her grief she wondered. However separate their fates might be, she could no longer think of these creatures as anything other than fellow women, like herself. 

* * *

Oswy watched the elf-maiden lead his mother away and felt more useless than ever. He had not known what to do or to say. Leofwyn had never wept in his presence before. He had not supposed she needed to, thinking her so strong. He debated following her to give comfort, but she had not asked for him, and so perhaps she wanted to be alone. It was ill, knowing there was nothing he could do to ease her. He liked it not. 

Nor did he like being left here among the women as though he was a child. Had Oshelm lived, he thought perhaps his father would have fought in this war of elves and orcs. Surely these slender warriors would have been glad of a Man's strength beside them. And Oswy would have been, as he had been before, his father's esquire and banner-bearer. He would have had a place, and known it, and been glad of it. 

He looked down the long pavilion. It was a strange hospital. A rill of water ran through it, glimmering in its green bed amongst the grass, threading its way past pallets where the injured tossed. Leaves blew in and were allowed to drift where ever they might, when it would be a simple matter to sweep them away. In sick-rooms he had visited with his mother there had always been darkness and that slight odour of old blood, but here was sunlight and the scent of the mallorn-blossom. And though they would not spare labour to clean away the leaves there was always at least one elf with time to spare in singing or playing on the harp. 

Oswy sighed and knelt down beside Cyn, who was propped on his side, half drowsing, half watching Gytha play with baby Scild. "Even the harpist is treated as though he does some vital task," he said bitterly, "Yet I am fit for nothing. If my father were alive, I would..." 

Wearily Cyn narrowed his blue eyes and shifted to look up into Oswy's frowning face. "Oshelm is here no longer, Oswy," he said, "What you will do is for you to say. You are Lord now." 

It was an apt reminder. Chastened by it, Oswy rose and found the bundle of green cloth wherein the elves had wrapped their swords - so trustingly restored to him. Taking Oshelm's sword on his knee he drew it and began to whet it thoughtfully. What should he do, now he was master of his own fate? What could he do, for Rohan and for his own people? 

Sunlight dappled the canopy over his head and cast a faint warmth on his bent back. The pass of the whetstone over the smooth blade was reassuring and absorbing, so that he did not at first perceive how all movement in the tent had stilled. It was the harpist's silence that made him raise his head to see that the Lord and Lady had entered the pavilion and stood together, the morning sun at the Lady's shoulder turning their bright hair to splendour. 

"The first attack has been repelled," said the Lord Celeborn, his face expressionless as he looked on the wounded, "We chased Dol Guldur's orcs from one end of our boundaries to the next and sent them howling into Rohan." 

"We cannot hope that this is victory," Lady Galadriel said, "But it is a reprieve." She smiled gently at both healers and those of the sick who had the strength to look upon her. "There will at least be no more death today, thanks to the valour of our defenders." Then she began to walk among the injured, speaking to each in turn. 

Lord Celeborn had turned to do the same, but Oswy forestalled him, standing in his way with the naked sword gleaming in his hand. "You sent them into Rohan?!" 

At Oswy's accusing tone, anger lit in the depths of the elf-Lord's dark eyes. "And if I did, is it for you to question me?" he said coldly, "I recall no alliance between Lorien and Rohan, only ill will and the spreading of worse rumours. Do not stand before me armed and demand I account for my deeds to _you_, child." 

Oswy took a step back, daunted. The drawn blade seemed but poor defence against the Lord's displeasure, and he felt both afraid and ashamed. In truth he had _forgotten_ the weapon in his hand. He had reacted like a child, running heedlessly to protest the deeds of the adults. Just was the elf-Lord's rebuke, yet it grieved him strangely from one who had hitherto treated him as a leader of men. He had not known the respect meant anything until it was lost. 

"I...am sorry," he said, and straightened his back to look up with more honour. "It was not meant as either discourtesy or threat. I was...troubled for my country and spoke rashly." A darkness came over him, and he knew his father's trust in him had been ill founded. _Better would Oshelm have done to entrust his people to Leofwyn, rather than me._ Nevertheless, inadequate as he was, for Rohan's sake he had to speak. He could not hold Celeborn's gaze for long, but found himself studying the turf once more. "But is there no way," he asked diffidently, "For you to pursue this host into the plain? If Saruman has sent armies against us, and our warriors are pinned elsewhere, I cannot begin to tell the ruin these new orcs might do, unopposed." 

Fear lengthened the pause into torment, and then Celeborn laughed softly. "No," he said, "We cannot pursue them. But Oswy..." Oswy glanced up and was bewildered by the look of kindness on the Lord's face. The anger had passed, swift as a shooting star, leaving no trace. "I have taken thought for Rohan," said Celeborn gravely. "Already my messengers fly ahead of the orcs to Fangorn where dwells an old ally and friend of mine. I doubt me that a single orc will pass his vigilance, now that his blood is up for war. You need have no fear on that score." 

Then wonder came over Oswy and his heart was changed towards the elves. Moved by an impulse of valour he had almost despaired of finding in himself he knelt down and lifted up his father's sword with the blade across his upraised hands. "Then receive my sword, Lord," he said, "For you have been a better protector of my people than I, and this is all I have to give in return." 

Celeborn gazed on him in surprise, and for a moment Oswy was terrified that the elvish lord would deem him but a child, play acting. He did not think he could ever raise his head again in front of his people, or look himself in the face, if that happened, howsoever gently it was done. But then Celeborn leaned down and placed his hands over Oswy's, steel between them. "I take your fealty, Oswy Oshelming. Not in payment of debt, for there is no debt between us, but in common cause. Rise now, warrior of Lorien and await my command." 

So Oswy rose smiling, and sheathed his sword. And for the first time since Oshelm's death he felt he had a place again, and he was glad of it. 

* * *

It rained. Half the sky was black with clouds and half pricked with stars. The round moon turned the falling water to lines of silver, and sheened the wet leaves. In the cool freshness voices sounded closer and calmer, and the gold and green lanterns of Lorien floated like flowers of Aman, blurred and turned strange by the gleam and patter of the downpour. 

Galadriel stepped out onto the uncanopied deck of her high talan. Here in the dark sky the water under her bare feet shimmered, so it was as if she danced on Ithil. And for a moment her spirit tore within her as the Sea-Longing fought with her desire to remain until the very end of the earth. _I do not remember such beauty in Valinor. Pain puts an edge even on glory._

She ducked beneath the awning that circled half of the flet and squeezed the rain out of her long plaits before walking further in. It was warmer here, and the sound of the rain on the fabric roof was lulling. Long spills of water trailed from the eves like pennants of crystal and diamond. Somewhere far off, in a dry nest like this, a nightingale greeted the rain with her own fall of liquid notes and, near at hand, the pure tones of a wooden flute uplifted a song of Nenuil to the midnight hush. 

Celeborn rose to greet her. He said nothing, but poured hot spiced wine and pressed the cup into her hands. His fingers brushed the cold rain from her cheek gently, and he smiled before turning away and sitting once more with his back to the treetrunk. She sipped the wine, finding her own place, drawing on a cloak of fur and fastening it with a latch made of a single huge pearl. After the day's exertions and grief it was pleasant just to sit and breathe, to feel the movement of the tree in the breeze and hear the small crackle of charcoal in the brazier which lit her face with warmth. 

It was hard to remember she was angry with her husband, but she made the effort nevertheless. "'Turhael' you have been called - 'wise Lord'," she said, "But I do not see the wisdom of taking on a child as bondsman." 

"He is not a child to his own people." Crosslegged, Celeborn had laid across his lap an axe as tall as he was. Its grey ash shaft was bound with rings of chased silver, its great head of blued steel was inlaid with Elu Thingol's device of falling stars. It beckoned Galadriel into the paths of memory and she came to kneel beside it, touching the tracery of Daeron's runes that made it look almost dwarvish to her eyes. 

"Melian's work," she said, feeling the Maia's bright and watchful presence laced through the metal. A great anguish of longing for Valinor lanced through her suddenly, for Melian had returned there many thousands of years ago, and there she remained. Even as Galadriel's parents, and her brothers, and her daughter waited there for her. 

"Yes," Celeborn sharpened the edge until it shone like the falling rain, "And older than the Sun. For Melian made it when Morgoth returned, and her enchantments are strong on it against his servants." The flash of his smile was fierce. "It has been a faithful servant to me: In the war beneath the stars, before ever your people returned to Middle Earth; in the War of Wrath, when the Noldor remained on the Isle of Balar; in Ost-in-Edhil, when you and I were apart, and too many times between. And every time I hold it I know that Doriath yet endures, if only in me." 

Thus in this as in all things. To her it was a call to Valinor. To him an affirmation of his ties to Middle Earth. She looked away. "If the Rohirrim spend their children rashly what is that to us?" she asked angrily, "Tell me you will not take this boy into war." 

"You would have me dishonour him instead?" 

"I would have you..." she rose and paced to the door. Now that she had grown used to the warmer air within, the night seemed over cool on her face, "I would have you not have made this decision in the first place." She turned, feeling caged, wishing to just walk away as she had in Eregion, so at least she would not have to _watch_ as he put himself in peril. "You know you will be forever looking over your shoulder to be sure the boy is safe, and you cannot afford to be distracted thus. No warrior can." 

There was silence. Celeborn bent his head and sang over the axe a long soft song in an ancient tongue, strange to her. All their years of togetherness were nothing before it, and in its power he seemed to her, as at times long ago, as alien and remote as the most savage of the Avari. When it was done he raised his head and looked at her askance through the pale waterfall of his hair. "And here was I," he said, grimly, "Thinking you must wish for my death." 

"I..." she tried for fury and found it beyond her grasp. The night was too cold and her heart too weary. Instead she lifted the axe away and came to sit by his side. "I should hope for it, I suppose," she agreed. "For it would shorten our parting." But she had seen Linnoth, clutching the dead body of her lover to her breast, and the human woman kneeling sobbing by her husband's cairn, and she could not harden herself to willingly endure the same. "But I find I cannot. It would be too mean a victory. I would have you come West because you wished it, not because you had no other choice." 

He raised both hands and smoothed back the rain-dampened hair from her brow, smiling a slow smile of delight. Then he cast his arms around her and held her close, and the night no longer seemed so chill. "Thank you," he said, "I will take care. I swear it." 

* * *


	9. Recovery and Threat

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 9 

A long day had passed in toil. Tasariel's outriders returned to the makeshift barracks set up in the angle between Silverlode and the Lady's wards. Some curried and tended their horses, while others began the tedious task of cleaning and repairing armour. Haldir's folk took up once more the watch on the door of Moria, and an uneasy peace fell. Smoke curled out of the Black Pit of the Dwarrowdelf, and changing winds brought long banners of fume and ash out of Mirkwood. The sky to the East began in sulphur and deepened into soot as shadow crept forth from Mordor, harbinger of its armies. 

Haldir walked about the camp, checking its order. All was well. With freedom to think, he marvelled again at the Lady's bravery in choosing this place - this small wood between three of the Enemy's strongholds - as her own land. Long ago, when the Dwarves first stirred up the Balrog of Moria, Amroth, King of Lorien, had fled from its threat with many of his folk, choosing to run to the Havens rather than stand firm. Lorien might have perished then, but that the Lord and Lady heard the people's pleas for help and left their home in Belfalas to settle here and rule in Amroth's stead. 

Haldir sighed, looking out at the advancing darkness of the sky. Amroth had been all consumed by love, and perhaps had little choice but to follow Nimrodel in her flight to the sea. He could not blame the King. But Amroth's retreat made Haldir's regard for the Lord and Lady all the stronger. _They have been steadfast for us. Now we will endure for them._

The breeze freshened, and the trees tossed overhead, and of a sudden the sound was of the ocean. Gulls wailed, and a voice full of sorrow cried out words he could not quite catch. There was a tang of salt in the air, and the slap of ropes on the masts of ships all long ago fallen to the still places in the deeps of the water. Ever, when the wind was in the South, the voice of Amroth would be blown from the sea, where he had drowned, still striving to be reunited with his beloved. It was a familiar sound, but no less eerie for that. "Stars shine on your face, Majesty," Haldir said to the wind, "But one lost King is enough. No more." 

"And thus we see why Haldir is exiled to the borders of the Dwarrowdelf." Tasariel appeared beside him; a tall woman of the Noldor, lithe and strong and ...lordly... in her tunic, trousers, and leather gambesson, "Talking to the dead? It is an ill craft." 

"Forgive me, lady," Haldir laughed softly, and nodded at the busy encampment with its many fires, smells of cooking, and raised, challenging voices. "I am not used to such crowds. Oft on our patrols my brothers and I have no one to speak to but the air. It is a hard habit to break." 

"Yet we are a host," she said, "And it were ill to face death with a night of such grim thoughts behind us. Let us rather use this peace in a time of storm to rejoice, that we may be strengthened for tomorrow." 

At her council Haldir felt chilled. If it had come to snatching every last bliss before ruin, then there truly must be little hope. But he nodded, "Aye, let the Enemy listen to our laughter, and may it choke him." 

So as the sun went down, lighting the spill of Mordor cloud from beneath, the elves on the Northern border made preparations for a feast. 

While twilight still lingered above the mountains, a horn-call rang out, further in the woods. Turning to it, Haldir saw the healers returning - Orophin among them, his wheat-blond hair marking him out even at a great distance. He looked still sobered and silent, calmer than he had been during the battle, but only as the surface of quicksand is calm, when no unwary beast has yet trodden it. 

"Should he be here?" said Tasariel, with a touch of dismissive arrogance, as though she had no time for Silvan frailty, "Unrecovered, returning to a situation he knows he cannot endure?" 

Then Haldir was wroth, "Lady," he said, "How else is he to learn? If a child is tossed from a horse once, and frightened, is it not a greater friendship to put him straight back on? I am proud of him that he is making a second attempt." And he went to embrace his brother and welcome him back. 

Night fell, and the few stars were dim in the heavens, obscured by mists and smoke, but the garrison of Moria set out lanterns in the trees, and banners of gold and silver, pricked with bells that chimed softly as the breezes stirred them. The healers had brought word from the Lady Galadriel that no attack would come this night, nor early in the morning, so they drank and were merry in the face of death. And many who had been tense and close to tears, as Orophin had, were eased by this proof that joy could coexist with sorrow. 

But when Linion, Tasariel's minstrel, opened his mouth to sing - first to bring melody into the darkness - Haldir arose and left the warmth of the fires, passing beyond the wards to a place where he could not hear the music. He spent the rest of the night alone, quietly making arrows. For he had sworn not to listen to any song before Orophin's, and Orophin remained silent. 

* * *

There was feasting also in Caras Galadhon. The sides of the healer's pavilion were rolled up so that all within could see the merriment. Where there had been one harper there were now three, challenging each other in a light hearted game of skill. The sick were brought such tender meats as they could manage, and watered wine, and encouraged to turn their faces towards the laughter and the lights. 

Cyn was recovered enough to teach Ithildir - occupant of the nearest bed to his - how to play Tafl. It proved a long game as one or the other of them would drift into sleep between moves, but they seemed to manage well enough, he with no elvish and the elf with no Westron. 

Tired beyond measure, wept dry, Leofwyn rocked Scild in her arms and watched Gytha run up and down from one end of the pavilion to the next. "Child," she said, "Be still, you fret the injured." 

Gytha ran to her side immediately and looked up with bright impudence. Now she was no longer afraid for her father some of her pliable good behaviour had worn off. "Lady, I want to look at the feast. I want to go see Oswy. May I, please?" 

"I..." she knew not what she wanted to say or why she was so reluctant. It would be safe enough for the girl to go just to the fountain clearing. Likely her only danger would be that she would be smothered with over kindliness. 

"You could come with me. Daddy doesn't mind, do you daddy?" 

Cyn smiled indulgently but raised his weary gaze to Leofwyn rather than his daughter, "It does me good to see her happy. Would you?" 

She felt bullied - like a reluctant horse being goaded towards a jump it feared. Part of her yearned to stay in silence and darkness; to sit by Oshelm's cairn and care for nothing more until swift thirst sent her to his side. But then who would look after Scild? Could she leave him here motherless, to be raised by some elf-woman, ignorant of his birthright, of his very kind? She sighed and pulled herself to her feet laboriously, putting out a hand for the girl, "Very well then. Though we will not stay long. Elves may sing all night, but little girls need their sleep." 

Leofwyn walked in silence, but Gytha soon pulled her hand away and began the to and fro running of an ill trained dog - or an exuberant child. Folk, gliding like faint lights towards the sounds of merriment, eddied around her effortlessly, and one slender flautist stopped to lean down and place a garland of violets on her hair. Their faces mirrored one another in startled joy for a moment, before he laughed and fled back to the smiling lady he walked with. 

"Look!" said Gytha, twirling in place with her hands outstretched, the small purple flowers nodding over her curly blonde hair and pink cheeks, "Isn't it beautiful! ...Oh!" 

They had come to the edge of the fountain glade. In the darkness the great mallorn was ablaze with lanterns - white as starlight, golden as the sun, green as summertime. Torches and lamps flared on every tree and the clearing was full of leaping fires, and elves. Elves with flowers in their gleaming hair, white gems glittering on their raiment, happiness on their faces and voices loud with mirth. 

At the end of a long line of feasters the Lord and Lady sat, he crowned with yellow elanor and she with white niphredil. Beside them sat Lord Calandil, who had taken Oswy away this morning to teach him his new duties and had not yet allowed him back. Calandil's wreath of mayblossom sat a little drunkenly on his gold-wound plaits, Leofwyn thought, and unexpectedly the small imperfection made her smile. 

The fountain leapt and dazzled, full of lamp and fire and starlight. The air was sweet with song. Pipe, lute and drum combined in racing melody, at once otherworldly and full of excitement. Someone handed her a bowl of roast meat and buttered greens and new baked bread. Sitting down, a little dazed, she watched Gytha scramble away from her side and plunge into the dancing, to be swept up and spun in circles by a reveller; her laughter joining theirs. 

_I... am alive,_ she thought, with some resentment but more marvel. _I am alive, and the night is fair, and there is still good in the world._ She thought of the destruction of her village and the death of her husband, the prospect that tomorrow the enemy would strike again, and more would die, crushed beneath a tide of orcs, and it seemed strange to her, almost callous, to feast and rejoice in the face of that. 

It was callous, perhaps. And yet she felt better for it. 

* * *

One of the other pages handed Oswy a full jug of wine and hooked away the empty that dangled from Oswy's fingers without breaking step. "Le hannon!" said Oswy a little self consciously, and grinned with satisfaction at the look of cool approval he received in return. He had not done so badly for himself during his day of cleaning armour. He now knew the names of many of the squires and had acquired a few - terribly accented - phrases in elvish. 

On the other side of the clearing he saw his mother, eating with a faint smile on her face, and Gytha, red to her hairline, panting and giggling. Seeing him she waved, gulped down a drink and then disappeared among the dancers. Leofwyn nodded at him, and the pride in her eyes warmed him through. Taking the wine to Calandil, Oswy felt briefly well content. His family were turning their faces towards life as meadow daisies open to greet the sun. 

He sighed and looked up. The sky was slate grey overhead, and the gibbous moon rode above their revelry among wracks of heavy cloud. Its white light was devoured by shadow even as he watched, and - born on the night air like a vapour - fear seemed to flow from the East and curl about him. The music and laughter of elvish celebration fell away, and the warmth of the fires grew chill. It seemed that all lights sickened, and Oswy wanted to tear his eyes from the sky, but he was caught. Dread fell on him as he saw, high above the trees, a black speck come drifting. Ash from a fire, it could have been, except there was purpose in its flight. 

No crow. No raven even. He swallowed, his mouth gone suddenly dry, his breath full of the taste of tin. The black speck was no more a speck. It flew towards them - towards _him_ - and its speed was greater than the wind. The lamplight faltered, and the stars swooned before it as it swelled and grew, huge and fell. The moon covered his face. And then it was upon them, turning above the clearing with a thin, cold cry. A voice that spoke of poison, and yearning, as a ghost might cry, desiring and hating the blood of the living. Terror stopped Oswy's heart. He breathed in despair, knowing himself to be alone, worthless, contemptible, and - letting the wine fall from his hands - he cowered before the black wings, covering his face. 

Then Lady Galadriel stood, a slender elf-woman crowned with white flowers. She spread out her arms in a gesture of denial towards the night borne abomination. Light leapt from her hands like the dazzling fountain bursting from the earth. It seemed the pillar of radiance would transfix the black flying thing above them, but at the last moment it broke, wheeled away and departed towards Dol Guldur, its shrill cry freezing the night behind it. 

Galadriel lowered her hands, brushing them against her skirt as if to shake off dirt. "The servants of the Dark Lord are unmannerly," she said, speaking into a sudden silence, "I do not recall inviting Lord Khamul to our feast." Her eyes were fierce, a ferocity mirrored in her husband's smile. 

"I will rebuke him for it when we meet," said Celeborn, laughing. 

The feast began again, and in defiance it seemed in better cheer than before. But Oswy sat, hugging his knees and trying not to weep. Terror had departed with the dwimmerlaik, but stronger than ever lay the conviction of utter worthlessness on him. _They make a jest of it. And I cannot even raise my head and look at it._ He knew his cowardice had been seen and noted. His brief tenure as a warrior of Lorien was over. Tomorrow he would be back with the other children, and rightly so. 

A comforting hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up with astonishment into the narrow, delicate face of Lord Calandil. The moon turned the elf's fair skin into silver, inhuman and beautiful. 

"I am no good after all," Oswy said. He would rather the condemnation came out of his own mouth, allowing him at least the virtue of humility. He picked up the fallen wine jug. It was of course empty, the grass stained and sodden at his feet. "I am sorry." 

But Calandil's gaze was measured. Without pity or blame. "Do not think you are the only Man ever to react thus to the Nazgul," he said, "This fear is their power, and it waxes great beneath the Shadow of Mordor. But forewarned is forearmed. You know now what to expect, Oswy, when you ride out to war against the forces of Darkness." 


	10. All Ablaze

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 10 

There was no dawn. A drab, brown light lay over the wilderness between Lorien and the eves of Eryn Fuin. Anduin rolled dun under a sky of grey. No birds sang to welcome the day, but a shadow wheeled above the clouds and fear followed the unseen wraith as the stench of the down draught of its wings. 

Erethon was on watch at the borders, taking note of the comings and goings among the squat black tents of the glam-hoth. Yesterday his patrol had managed to cut loose one of the pontoons that bridged the river, but it had cost them dear, coming within range of the enemy, and the venture had proved useless, since the orcs had recovered their bridge down stream. Its ugly, tarred weight lay again like a shackle across mighty Anduin's neck. 

The Nazgul passed overhead, deepening the already dim light. Orc horns brayed and clamour spread from their camp. Turning his eyes towards Dol Guldur Erethon saw something black and huge draw out of the twisted boughs of Mirkwood. Teams of _yrch_ were dragging it. Like centipedes they looked at this distance, all slimy armour and legs. Warg riders rode beside it. A vast misshapen bow on the back of a heavy carriage, it seemed, shaped from oaks ravaged from the Greenwood. Teams of Uruks paced beside the wagon, six at a time, carrying its mast-sized arrows, which did not come to points. Instead, on the tip of each massive beam, there was a cage of iron and glass from whose ill made joints black liquid seeped. 

"Siege engines against a wood?" Erethon asked himself, "What folly is this?" But he misliked the way it crept slowly closer, leaving its trail of ooze to foul the grass it crushed. The orcs of the camp greeted its appearance with bloodthirsty yells. Foreboding seized Erethon. He caught hold of his messenger and told him "The great ones must see this. Bring them. Run fast!" 

A moment of disquieting peace settled over the land. Mordor cloud eddied and a sunbeam stabbed down, illuminating the machine in all its hideous glory. It was close now, set up upon the other side of the river. Chains rattled amid an outcry of whips and screaming, as slaves turned the windlass to pull back the cable that was its bowstring. 

Sunlight passed. The cloud closed again and the day seemed darker than before. Rope groaned under tension. One of the Moria orcs climbed up onto the arrowhead with a torch. Vainly an elf of Erethon's patrol shot at him - but the engine was just beyond the archer's range. The arrow fell, wasted, on the ground, as the goblin touched his torch to the globe of black liquid. 

Instantly it was a ball of fire. At once the great bow was loosed and the fireball arced over Anduin trailing greasy smoke. Fifty paces into the borders of Lorien it fell, and oaks shattered under the impact. Splinters of glass exploded from the arrow tip, and with them went oil - a gush and pulse of thick oil that spattered on bark and branches, on leaf mould and pine needles, and then clung, burning, setting the living wood alight. 

"No!" Erethon tried to put out the nearest blaze with his cloak, but the oil soaked into the fibre and soon it too was ablaze. He flung it from his blistered hands and it burnt on, the fire eating out from it, tendrils winding through the undergrowth like poisonous snakes, creeping up saplings to make the leaves sizzle. 

"Here!" young Ardil ran forward, hurled a punctured waterskin at one of the fires. It burst, but instead of dousing the flames, the burning oil rode upon the water, splashing further. Fifteen trees were already alight and the blaze was spreading. 

"Leave it and fall back!" cried Erethon in dismay. 

There was the sound of hooves - many hooves quiet on Lorien's soft grass - but at the same time the shriek and thrum of the infernal crossbow sounded again. The arc was flatter now, the missile coming down further in. Two hundred paces inside Lorien's sacrosanct borders the second fireball fell and all began to burn. 

* * *

Galadriel felt the heat of the fire on her face, gentled her horse. Looking at the fair woodlands shrivelling in flame, seeing through the curtain of fire the seething blackness that was the army of Dol Guldur, hearing their jeering laughter, she grew cold, crystalline with fury. 

"This must not be." Celeborn vaulted from his horse, walked to the edge of the forest fire with his hands outstretched as if he longed to touch and comfort the dying trees. When he turned Galadriel saw in his eyes, as in the eyes of every elf there, a shock and disbelief hotter and whiter than the flames behind him. "It _must not_." 

Galadriel slid down from her palfrey and stood very still, her eyes closed. Gathering Nenya's power she sent her thoughts outwards, feeling the world spin, winds jostle like ill tempered giants above her, tracks of power, the flight of Saruman's gorcrows, the distant hidden murmur of waterfalls in Imladris. A third missile screamed in to burst among the trees to her right. She felt it little, poised like a weaver with the winds as her thread. Instead, gently, she guided a spool of air onto her loom. 

The breeze shifted, flowing cool from Caradhras, smelling of rain; heavy spring rain that washes away dams and all the accumulated dreariness of winter. A few drops fell, pattering onto leaves, hissing into steam. She smiled. And then, across the brown, wasted lands, on the tip of a needle of black stone, the Great Eye turned to look on her, and the mind of Gorthaur, Annatar, Sauron the deceiver was bent upon her. As Gil-Galad must have suffered, pinned beneath the black, burning hand, she also felt - exposed, suffocated, in agony. Involuntarily, she winced - a tiny movement of pain across her serene face. 

The wind changed again, wheeling back to the East, bringing at first a marsh stench and then arid fumes that parched the throat and seemed to make the fires burn more greedily. 

Longing to do Sauron hurt, to gore the diamond and adamant power of Nenya across his filthy spirit, she endured a moment, but it was not for her to reveal the secrets of the Three to him. Retreating at last she let go her power. Her legs felt suddenly weak. She swayed, and Celeborn caught her shoulders, steadied her. "The Enemy is aware of me," she said, opening her eyes. Her voice sounded weary. _So defeated, I would hardly know it myself,_ and her husband's face grew grim. "I cannot wrest the winds of the world out of His hand to bring rain. Not without I drain the power I am hoarding against our uttermost need." 

"Very well," Celeborn nodded, a brusque gesture. Where she felt drained, he seemed alight. There was a flame like that of his tortured land in his eyes, fey and dangerous. "Then we will try it my way." His gesture brought Merethir and Calandil out of the escort, and they nodded understanding, as though this had all been discussed before. 

"Erethon. I will need you and your archers on horseback." 

"My Lord." 

The human boy brought Celeborn's armour, looking bemused at its lightness. The long hauberk of mithril chain, made for him when he ruled Eregion, brought back memories of betrayal, terror and sorrow she had wanted never to revisit. It was as fair as all of Celebrimbor's work, the same icy, pure colour as her Lord's hair against the backdrop of blazing amber. 

Seeing him buckle the belt around it, reach for his helmet, arrayed for war like a hero of the elder days, a darkness of remembrance came over Galadriel. _Even so Celebrimbor must have looked in Ost-in-Edhil. Before they took him, and abused him, and hung him from a pole, as their banner._ She caught Celeborn's arm. He must not be allowed to do this. Had he not promised to take care? "No!" she said, "It is folly to go beyond the wards. You run into needless peril at the Enemy's bidding. It is his very purpose to draw you out thus." 

Before the many eyes who watched their quarrel she could not say it; _You are my weakness and my strength. The Enemy cannot touch me. But if he kills you..._ They would break his body in her sight, and she did not know, she did not want to know what she would do then. As Melian had turned her back on her kingdom when Elu died, her heart cried out that she would care nothing for Lorien if its Lord was slain. "Remember Doriath!" she said, "Let the borders burn, they will regrow." 

Celeborn leapt back on his horse, put out a hand and Calandil passed him a long spear with a pennant of green and gold. Pausing, he looked down. Had he heard in the sparse words what was essentially a declaration of love; the confession of her vulnerability? Would it turn him back? 

He smiled, a flicker of warmth that did not touch the danger in his eyes. "We are not they," he said stubbornly, "And I will not have this." 

Fury overcame her. She clenched her hands at her sides. "No," she said, bitterly, "For Elu's foolishness was at least over something important. But you risk all for common trees. Not even mellyrn." 

There came another burst of fire and a glade of beech went up, twisting and roaring in flame. Celeborn matched her wrath with his own. "They are my craft, my joy. As dear to me as the Silmarils to Feanor, and I _will not_ stand by and watch them die." 

She was Galadriel, and she had done all the pleading she would. She drew herself up, "So be it," she said coldly, turning away, "If you wish to imitate Feanor in his madness there is little left to say. Only think how much good it did _him_." 

The half-wing of cavalry departed behind her back as she bent her mind towards preventing the spread of flame. The Enemy had chosen his vantage point well. From here it was but a little distance to Caras Galadhon and if the fire could not be checked it might indeed threaten the city. _But I will not tell him so._

The sound of battle reached her ears. Calmly, she gave orders for ditches to be dug and the waters of the Silverlode diverted. When all was underway she mounted her palfrey and departed, calmly, for the city. She smiled encouragingly at the diggers, messengers, and the healers she passed on their way to the battle lines. And inside she told herself that if he died, the last thing he would ever have had from her lips would be condemnation. 

It was poor comfort to know it was all his own fault. 

**********************************************

A/N: CCasey - couldn't find an email address to thank you for the review, so I'll do it here. Many thanks! It's probably my main aim - to write elves who are authentically elvish, so it's a great relief if you think I'm getting it right. Thanks! 


	11. The Sortie

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 11 

* * *

Oswy did not know if this was dream or nightmare. Hooves crunched on charred black soil and the air was hot and bitter in his mouth. He could feel, by the waxing and waning of terror, the ever present threat of the wraith circling above, and when he looked out the forces of the Enemy were like cockroaches, crawling thickly over the riverbank, clustering about the foul machine that was their target. 

"Take this," Celeborn turned his horse and passed Oswy a banner mounted on a long, shining spear. The pennant snapped angrily in the east wind, streaming out over the elvish host. There, on a field of midnight blue, circled eight comets with heads of diamond and tails of silver about a moon of pearl. They gleamed even in the barren, brown light. "And do not let it fall. It is the emblem of my King." 

"My Lord!" said Oswy, aghast at the honour, "Though I die it shall stand." 

"Gurth a choth in edhil! Gurth an glamhoth!" cried the Lord of Lorien, setting his heels to his horse's flank. The riders surged forward behind him. Oswy saw now why the elvish cavalry was called a 'wing' - they rode as if in flight. Pale were their horses and their mail silver, their shields as white as snow. 

For a moment he was upborne as though soaring amid the wings of swans in the light of the first sunrise. There was a glimmer about the elves' faces and their hands, and the unsheathed blades of their swords. Their spears shone with wrath, and the Mordor filth of cloud above seemed only to make the elvish warriors blaze more brightly. Oswy felt at once ungainly, squat and clumsy among their tall elegance, and uplifted, permitted a last glimpse of something aweful and beautiful, before it passed away into memory and song. 

A din of mocking shrieks greeted them as they flew toward the enemy host. The army of Dol Guldur drew up in deep ranks about their precious engine. At the gallop the cavalry formed into a spear of riders; Celeborn at the point, Merethir and Calandil with their greatest knights to his left and right. Behind them, in the shaft of the spear, rode the rest of the force, the archers in shelter behind the knights. Oswy found himself beside a slight elf with amber eyes who carried the emblem of the Golden Wood - a banner of fresh spring green with a mallorn as its device, its trunk glimmering silver and its flowers of gold. She nodded at him and gave a smile like quicksilver. "I am Elien. Stay beside me and I will see no harm comes to you." 

He bit back the retort that he did not need to be defended by a girl. "Then Oswy, Oshelm's son, will do as much for you," he said with breathless courtesy. 

Across the orcs' own pontoon they sped, hooves drumming wild music from the splintered wood. The river lapped at their heels as they surged forward, wind in their faces, standards streaming above. Now a thundershower of arrows whined out from the enemy horde to ping uselessly from elvish armour, or fall behind riders protected by their own speed. Erethon's archers unshipped their bows and returned fire, shooting with as deadly aim from horseback as though they stood at peace among the boughs. 

The sharp point of the cavalry touched the first rank of orcs, drove inwards. The wedge of knights forced through the enemy shieldwall, making a gap that those in the shaft filed in to fill; carving and holding open a way to the machine, and a path by which to return. 

At last there stood naught between the elves and the siege engine but an Uruk chieftain upon a Lord of Wargs; grey backed, red of eye and tooth. Celeborn's spear took the Warg through the throat, but there it stuck fast. He cast it away, taking the blow of the Uruk on his shield, and, drawing his axe, he clove the creature's head in two and trampled its body beneath the hooves of his horse. 

There beneath the shadow of the engine he stopped, and Oswy, amazed, saw him set his hand to the timber of the great bow and speak to it in tones of command. Orcs scaled it from the other side, thick as maggots on a corpse, and Erethon's folk picked them off unerringly as they came. Yet more replaced them, and then more, and one by one the archers fell idle as their arrows were spent. 

Now stationary, the sortie was surrounded; a glimmer of light in a raging sea of darkness. By Oswy the knight who protected him was dragged from his horse by two wargs and torn between them like a rag of meat between dogs. The press of the horde drove inwards through the gap - the young archer, Ardil, meeting it in hopeless valour armed with naught but his two knives. Courage flared in Oswy at the sight. He wedged the pole of the banner of falling stars in his stirrup and, holding it one handed, he fell upon the orcs with his father's sword. Stabbing one through the shoulder, he turned to find Ardil had slain the second. As they smiled their thanks to one another the cavalry closed the gap, putting them both in shelter once more. 

"Na vedui!" said Celeborn, as Merethir hewed down three of the machine's attendant goblins behind his back. He looked up and cried in a clear voice "Drego!" 

At once the elves wheeled their horses. Striving their utmost they pressed the din-horde back, widening the path they had kept clear between them. The wedge of knights reformed and sped down the open space to crash like a storm upon the forces that stood now between themselves and Lorien. Turning, Oswy saw the Golden Wood - green leaves fluttering, a scent of springtime - and breathed in with relief. Safety, so close. 

But at that moment darkness fell on him. The Nazgul. The creature it rode came down like plague, and the vast stretch of its naked, featherless wings drove the stench of decay into his face. Heavy, slow, it turned above him, and the cowl of the wraith's hood swung from side to side as if it sniffed out spilled blood, or Oswy's fear. His limbs became as water and his heart trembled. Yet he was not its prey. It passed overhead, and the claws of the fell beast reached out, iron-taloned, towards the Lord Oswy had pledged his honour to protect. 

"Baw!" shouted Elian at Oswy's side. She stood in her stirrups. "Gurth a Ulaer!" and she hurled the banner of Lothlorien straight through the stretched hide of the dwimmerlaik's wing. 

Dark blood fell on her. The creature turned and its huge head came down. Oswy saw a beak filled with teeth, heard a sound like that of vast shears, told himself he should do something, he should... Then the wraith leaned forward and there came a whispering from the emptiness beneath its hood, as though it breathed out. Shadow took him, he swayed in the saddle, chilled to the bone, clinging to the King's banner as to a last glimpse of starlight in a world gone black. 

Elian's body fell on the ground and the emblem of Lorien fell next to her, the bright golden mallorn settling into blood and filth, broken as she was. 

The fell beast rose into the sky, ungainly on its injured wing, pursued by the last arrows of the elves, and it was only as it withdrew that Oswy's strength returned to him. He looked down. "No," he said, "No." Had he not said he would take care of her? Truly, he was nothing but a curse to these people. He began to dismount, thinking that at least he could bring home the standard she bore and thus preserve her honour. But, as Oswy paused, Ardil slapped the rump of his horse hard. 

"Noro! Noro lim." 

And he found himself galloping fast in the retreat with nothing to show for the end of a brave life but tears. 

* * *

Warg riders pursued them, and orcs surged behind them so the Anduin seemed engulfed in a tide of seeping oil - so many of the foul creatures were clambering over one another, driving their comrades' faces into the mud of the banks as they scaled them. The water ran black and sluggish, choked with orcs bloodcrazed enough to try swimming. 

Gaining the borders of Lorien, the sortie plunged on through an acrid wilderness of dead trees. Soot clung to Oswy's face and choked his breath, and his eyes were raw with weeping and with smoke. 

Within the wards Calandil's wing and the other half of Merethir's forces were drawn up in safety. Fresh and rested, they were eager to avenge their wood and their fallen friends. The sortie passed through them just as the pursuing orcs ran howling within bowshot, and the arrows of the elves came down like falling water on the army of Sauron. The dead were piled in heaps among the black and withered trees. 

Disoriented by safety, Oswy reined in. Around him healers helped the injured out of their saddles. Erethon's folk dismounted eagerly, accepted parcels of new arrows brought by maidens from the city, and returned to the fray, disappearing into the untouched woodlands that surrounded the gash of black devastation. Archers in the trees safe within the wards shot volley after volley into the burnt slot in the borders until it became a charnel mound where the orcs feared to tread. 

Down that black treeless scar Oswy could see across the river to where the siege engine stood, unmarked, unchanged by the elvish charge and sacrifice. Even now the enemy was winding up the great cable to fire it once more. Grief filled his throat. They had done nothing. They had failed. 

There came a jerk on his horse's head. He looked up, surprised. Calandil had taken his reins and was pulling him towards the ridge where Celeborn sat on his horse looking out at the battle with grim satisfaction. Orc blood marked Celeborn up to the elbow, and one shoulder was red with gore. Oswy had not yet seen such a hawk like, predatory look on the elf-Lord's face and he quailed before it, knowing himself dishonoured. He breathed in and forced the words out firmly, but in a very small voice. "I am sorry," he said, speaking rather to Calandil, whom he feared less, than to the Lord of Lorien, "I was forewarned but still I faltered. Still I could not stand when the wight was there." 

"Well," Calandil's mouth quirked in a small, sad smile, "Third time is the charm. Though I would not call this failure." 

Celeborn turned to look at Oswy with vague bemusement, stirring out of deep thought. "The banner of Elu Thingol stands," he said quietly, "Was that not all I asked of you?" 

"But," Oswy was ashamed further by their remote kindness, "So also stands the machine of the orcs, and... and the standard of Lorien is lost." 

"I am aware of the deed of Elian," said Celeborn, "And honour her. As for the engine, look." 

Uruks took one of the huge missiles from the pile beside the machine, loaded it into the great bow. Oil dribbled from its tip, igniting eagerly as the goblin marksman pressed a torch to it. It occurred to Oswy suddenly that he stood in the very centre of where the bolt would fall, and a flash of thought showed him the rain of fire, the heat, the agony. With a maul the orcs struck the lever to fire the machine. 

As a new bow, drawn fully back and loosed without an arrow, will sometimes burst apart in the hands of its wielder, fracturing into shreds, driving into his hands and face, so the siege engine exploded. The frame, no longer capable of containing the massive forces of its tensioned cable, tore apart, and went flying. Oak beams mowed down ranks of the enemy host - falling, shattering, splintering. The oil-soaked arrowhead tore into the heap of other missiles. They erupted in flame and great gouts of it arced through the air, spattering on the Uruk-Hai, setting alight the fur of the Wargs. Primal terror took the wolves of Dol Guldur and they ran hither and yon among the horde, howling, spreading the blaze. 

Seeing it, the orcs who fought still among the trees of Lothlorien were dismayed. They retreated to the further shore of the river, pursued by the arrows and the laughter of the elves. But those who had ridden in the sortie cheered, and one began to sing, a music full of rushing hooves and fire, sublime speed and the white blaze of the spears of the Galadhrim shining in the darkness. 

"For Galenros," said Celeborn as if to himself, "And for Ragnir, and for Elien. For Guilin and Gelion and Lhunuil." He sighed. 

_And for Oshelm,_ Oswy thought, moved and oddly comforted, _And Ceolwulf, Eldwyn and Folcwine..._ It was the first time he had dared think of them. But it no longer seemed strange to recite their names beside the casualties of Lorien. It seemed...right. His mood was lightened and his guilt assuaged at the thought that they would be avenged together. 

* * *

'Gurth a choth in edhil. Gurth an glamhoth.' = 'Death to the enemies of the elves. Death to the din-horde.'  
'Na vedui!" = At last!  
Drego!" = Retreat!  
"Baw!" = No! Don't!  
"Gurth a Ulaer." = 'Death to the Ringwraiths.'  
'Noro. Noro lim.' = 'Ride. Ride fast.'  



	12. Vulnerability Discovered

Battle of the Golden Wood, Chapter 12 

* * *

"My Lord," said Calandil, buckling the strap of his helmet to his saddle, "The last of the wounded are gone to the city and all is underway, will you not come?" 

The smell of innocent beauty wantonly destroyed mingled with the stench of orc blood on Celeborn's hands. His sleeve was soaked and heavy where Galenros had bled to death in his arms, and it seemed he could not look anywhere without feeling that charred gash in the fair woods of the borderlands as though it were a brand in his own skin. Even within the wards leaves were scorched, and trunks burnt. Beneath the ground the voices of roots cried out to him for healing as they slowly shrivelled, blackened and died. 

The elation of battle faded, to be replaced by too much pain. 

"My Lord?" said Calandil, in concern. 

"Though he will kill for the sake of it," Celeborn was glad to hear his voice sound calm, measured, "Still the Enemy has a plan in this." He gestured towards the smoking ruin. "Behold. The attack came where the wards run closest to the city and the width of forest is narrowest." 

"You believe he could threaten Caras Galadhon?" Calandil sounded incredulous. To the core he was a son of the fence, building all his thoughts on the knowledge that the protective magic of a Sindar Queen was unassailable. "How? No matter what Khamul throws at our borders, still his forces cannot come within the wards." 

"They will not need to." Measuring distances, Celeborn's heart sank still further at the knowledge of a real weakness. He pieced the plan together as he spoke. "With the machine beyond arrowshot they burn the borders, so we have no cover from which to attack them. Then they bring their engine across the river and set it up just outside the wards. From there, they have the range to hurl their firebolts into the very centre of Caras Galadhon." 

"But the wards..." 

"Will only keep out living creatures. Not missiles. With the borders burnt, to prevent them we will have to come out from the Lady's protection; fight them in open warfare. And there are a hundred of them to every one of us. Such a tactic would be suicide." 

His thoughts turned to plans for evacuation; what needed to be taken and what might be left. Galadriel's orchard and the fields of lembas-corn were within the city walls. It would be ill to lose them, but the forest could provide all else the people needed - food, water, shelter. Perhaps - he told himself firmly - it would after all be a blow they could endure. Visions of the mellyrn screaming and twisting in flame like the beeches of the borderland were of use to no-one, and he set them aside to be grieved over later, if they came to pass. He would not waste anguish on a future which might never happen. He would laugh in the Enemy's face, and survive. 

Silent beside him, Calandil had evidently had similar thoughts. He smiled now and shook his head. His ornamented hair rang like little bells, wound gold glinting. "Then it is as well we destroyed the machine before all this evil could come to pass." 

"Others will come." 

Stooping before one of the new canals Calandil washed his hands clean of the orc taint and splashed his face, "Then we will burst them apart also, like this one." His eyes narrowed, filling with wickedness as his grin became as lively and impudent as the flying water. "So," he said at last, "Are you going to tell your wife that your deed was not folly at all, but dire need?" 

Celeborn forced a laugh, inspired by Calandil's resilience of mood. "Truly are you named, bright friend," he said in jest, "But if you would say 'I told you so' to Galadriel in her present mood, then you are a braver man than I." 

"Nay, do you but smile at her and she will melt to a puddle of bliss at your feet." 

This time the laughter had no element of defiance in it, but was genuine and heartfelt. Turning towards the city, he released the reins of Calandil's horse into his friend's hand, shaking his head, "Would that I lived in whatever happy world you inhabit, Calandil. Though it bears little resemblance to reality, it pleases me well." 

* * *

Reality was the mirror glade, filled with strange shadows in the day's sallow dimness. 

Galadriel stood there, white as a statue of alabaster, crowned with radiance. The drape of her elegant sleeves, her straight back, her flawless brow and the depths of her eyes, in which the light of the Two Trees still shone, made her seem a figure out of ancient legend, even in the centre of her own land. A Queen, an enchantress, strong and subtle in the heart of her power. It seemed the very trees curled about her, and the glade enfolded her as the hand of Iluvatar enfolds the Flame of Ea. 

All was still. No breeze tossed the leaves above the mirror of Galadriel, and time seemed meaningless there, the still centre of the tempest that was history. 

Celeborn tossed his gauntlets into his helm and set them down gently on the turf. Quietly - for the place demanded quiet - he descended into timelessness. A piece of Valinor on the soil of Middle Earth, it was, alien and disquieting to him. His heart struggled in brief panic, like a fly caught in scented resin, waiting to be locked forever into unchanging amber. And again he was disgusted with himself - why could he not grow used to it? - and angry. Why should she wish to return to a life like this - if life it could be called? Was not change and growth the only possible balm for immortality? How could it be borne if tomorrow promised nothing different from today, infinitely? 

He stopped, facing his wife. Armour rippled at the movement and the mithril rings slid together with a sound like rain falling upon a stream, but at last it quieted. Silence fell, and he saw in his mind the two of them - the pure Lady and the armoured warrior facing each other across the poured, smoking water of the mirror - as though they stood in a tapestry. Bright, unmoving, barren. 

She could not possibly want so lifeless a peace. Surely she could not. Had she not fled from Valinor for this very reason, because there was not room for her ambition there, and her greatness was pinched in that narrow space? 

Eternity began to crystallize about him. He threw it off and moved, coming to her side and clasping her close. She breathed out, an 'oh' of relief and hopelessness mingled, and leaned back against him, closing her eyes. No longer a goddess, only his wife, who might not need his protection, but would have it whether or no. 

A small time passed as they rested against each other, and though Celeborn was content merely to feel her breathe within the circle of his arms and to rest his cheek on her soft hair, he could not ignore the fact that she trembled against him. He could feel the weariness in her - in every bone, in the dimming of a spirit that had once outshone the stars. Briefly, nauseously, he felt as though she too was slowly bleeding to death in his embrace; a quiet and lingering death, protracted over a thousand years. A death he could only prevent by losing her. 

Instinctively he tightened his grip, pulling her closer, breathing her in, as though he could force her to cleave to him. _Hold on! Hold on to me. I will bear you up. I will be enough for you!_ But he knew that he was not enough, and that her dreams were full of the Sea. Unimaginable though it was to him, the changeless rest of Aman called to her, and his love merely extended her torment. Soon, quite soon, he would have to open his hands and let her go. 

Galadriel turned in his embrace and pulled away slightly, examining him narrowly, her gaze caught by the red blood on his sleeve. "You are hurt!" 

But not yet. Celeborn let the shadow of the future pass from him. Galadriel was still here. It was senseless to grieve while she was yet here. He shook his head. "Alas, it is not my blood. I am unharmed." 

There was misery in her face, and it did not ease at his reassurance. He touched her cheek, and still it did not ease. A darkness lay on the Lady of Light. "But you, I think, are badly wounded. What has happened?" 

"Oh, my Lord." Galadriel put her arms about him and laid her head on his shoulder, and though he knew he was privileged to be the only being in all Ennor whom she would allow to see her thus weak, it froze him with foreboding. 

Tendrils of steam were rising into the cool, leaf-scented air from the surface of the mirror. Celeborn knew of only one influence that would make the water smoke so; the Eye of the Dark Lord. Fear for her, and frustration with her recklessness, and the very ends of too much pain prompted his words. "Why will you do this, Lady?" he burst out, "Why do you set yourself against the Enemy mind to mind? What do you accomplish by it? Other than to fill yourself with bitterness and pour away the wine of your pleasure in Middle Earth? It is folly...continuing folly. As vile a mistake as taking Nenya in the first place." 

Galadriel did not take kindly to being rebuked. She stiffened and stepped away. Anger flashed like a drawn blade in her eyes. "I have heard your complaints too often on these subjects. You nag, husband." Gliding with swan-like grace to the lip of the dell, she came where white steps reached down from Lorien to this otherworldly hallow, and strode up them, turning her back on him. 

Following, Celeborn felt like a diver, struggling out of deep water to a place where he could once more breathe - though the air be only the marred, mortal air of Arda. He caught her sleeve and stopped her halfway up the stairs, where a landing of smooth stone glimmered ghostly pale in the oppressive light. "I gave offence where I meant only to express sorrow," he said, "As seems to be my way. But pardon me, Lady, and do not bear this alone, whatever it is. Not when you have an ally so close." 

She smiled at that, though it was a wan, strained smile, "Such news as I have is, perhaps, better not shared, lest the despair spread." 

He took her hand, "I am not prone to despair. Tell me what you saw." 

But still it struck him to the core when she turned and clung to him, eyes pinched tight as though she could thus wall out the reality of her vision. "I have seen Frodo in the dungeons of the Dark Lord," she said in a chill, small voice. "The Enemy has the Ringbearer! The Quest has failed, and doom will take us all." 


	13. Without Hope

  


Chapter 13

* * *

In spite of threat, Celeborn's first thought was of pity, remembering Frodo as he had been when the halfling first entered Caras Galadhon and sat beside him. So small, and valiant. So noble and resolute, so unprepared and already so haunted. He understood the horror in Galadriel's eyes when she contemplated the breaking of that brave spirit, and he knew that she thought not only of Frodo, but of Finrod her brother, alike taken and taunted and finally defeated. Long ago, that loss, yet to elvish memory so close. 

But Celeborn would not repine, and grief he would use only as a spur to greater effort. Let Sauron tremble, for every one of his vile deeds would be avenged one day. As Eru Iluvatar was all powerful, one day Sauron would pay, even as his master had. And though Celeborn himself might be long dead when that happened still the _estel_ consoled him. 

"Was Sam there?" he said. 

"Sam?" Galadriel looked up at first with a gallows smile, as though she thought he jested, but a moment later her eyes widened, and brightness returned to them. "I saw nothing of Sam, and it seems to me Sauron knows nothing of him. You think my little gardener strong enough to carry the Burden alone?" 

There had been that in Sam - comical though he seemed at times - that Celeborn had recognized, but found hard to describe. He was as common and tenacious as dandelion, with a connection to the soil that reminded the Lord of his own people's stubborn devotion to this world. Deep roots, and an obstinacy like that of the earth itself. "I do not think it wise to overlook him." 

A fool's hope, and yet had not Mithrandir used the same words to describe the Quest of the Fellowship itself. All hope was now foolish, but that did not make despair wise. 

"If the Enemy had the ring, surely it would be upon his finger now, and you would _know_. Until that time comes let us act as if we may still prevail." Looking back on a life Galadriel had described as 'a long defeat' he laughed suddenly, for though horror and evil were in the world, still he stood in Lorien, and it was springtime, and the boughs were laden with new blossom. Until the land itself gave up, he would not. "Yet even if the Quest fail and Sauron regain the Ring, what of it? He is not mightier than Morgoth, whom we fought without hope, and yet survived. I stood against Sauron once when he bore the One Ring new forged, and I am more than willing to do it again." 

At that Galadriel laughed softly. Lifting up her white hand she gestured, and a wind touched the canopy of the mellyrn. Clouds drew reluctantly apart above the clearing and a pale gleam told where the moon steered his wayward course. A star glimmered in the heavens, and on Galadriel's finger Nenya glowed in response, gilding her with light. "Nor am I, even now, utterly without power," she said. Then she looked at her husband narrowly, and he felt for the first time how filthy he still was. His hair tickled him, gummed to his cheek by dried blood. With starlight still in her hand Galadriel reached out, smoothed the lock of hair away, tucking it behind his ear. Her immaculate dress bore now a pattern of black circles where the orc blood from his mail had soaked into it, and at the sight he thought guiltily, as at times long ago, that perhaps all he truly did for her was sully her purity and dim her light. 

"Come," said Galadriel, and rested her palm fleetingly against his cheek, "Let us go and face the new day together. You should rest, ere it begins again. But thank you, my Lord. Thank you for reminding me again that it is never wise to underestimate the partner of a Ringbearer." 

His heart warmed at her words and he leaned forward, lightly to kiss her. "Rest?" he said, "Is there time for it? What else have you seen of the Enemy's plans?" 

Sighing she reached for his hand and laced her fingers through his. "Alas," she said, "Each time you talk me into hope I reply with ill news. What we have weathered thus far has been as nothing to the third and greatest attack. It will encompass us with foes, but it will begin in the North. With Moria." 

Celeborn paused and looked towards the vale of Nimrodel, thinking of the forces he had sent there. It did not seem enough, but it was all he had. "Even if the Ring is lost, and Nenya's strength fails us, and the wards must be abandoned, still Tasariel and Haldir will hold," he said, defiantly. 

"Perhaps," said Galadriel. 

* * *

Over Dor-Nimrodel there lay a long shadow. As the hidden sun went down into the West, Haldir stood on the very top of a tall ash and looking out beheld a brown day fade into featureless black. Only to the South was there a red, sullen light where embers still smouldered on the borders of Caras Galadhon. Ash was on the wind, and a smell of death. 

"What do you see?" Tasariel called. She would not venture into the higher branches, not having shed her Noldor love for stone cities and paved paths. 

"Nothing," Haldir sighed, "From Moria all seems quiet. But I feel..." 

He strained his farsighted gaze. The carrion-tainted wind stirred his long hair and whined in the fletchings of his arrows, slung on his shoulder. The tree swayed beneath him. Dread seemed to fill the empty spaces of the night and whisper with ghost voices along the moving air. Again he turned his eyes to Moria, and frowned. Something _was_ amiss. The great hollow place under the hill was an abyss, as always, but the texture seemed wrong. Not like rocks or the ruins of old roadways, but like a mass of insects crawling. Either the very stones of the mountains moved or... 

"Ware!" he called "They come!" 

He saw them now - Moria orcs as black as the night, their mail dirtied so that not a gleam came from them, even the blades of their swords as dull as pitch. Their black standards had no device, and their eyes did not reflect light. In front, what he had taken as gnarled trees bent beneath the wind were revealed as trolls. Great, scaled, green-grey cave trolls with leashes around their necks and their slab-like faces contorted with rage at the sky above them. Mutely the host of Moria drew close, and fear struck Haldir at the sheer silence of it. 

As he stood in wonder he was aware of his archers spreading into position in the trees around him, and Tasariel's forces mounting, setting on their helms. Light gleamed from drawn blades. The air felt heavy, hard to breathe, and as it were an exhalation from a tomb, the dread which lay over the forest deepened and rushed over him. At once the waiting hush was riven with the pound of drums. A shriek like that of some huge, cold creature, miserable and full of malice shivered the trees. 

"Haldir!" came Orophin's voice, panicked, full of warning. He turned towards the sound, and the great naked wings and iron talons of a Fell Beast soared out of the darkness and were upon him. It's gaping charnel mouth he ducked, and twisted out of the way of its claws, but the lash of its tail caught him as he was reaching for his knives and slammed into his chest. Overbalancing, he clutched vainly at a dry twig. It came off in his hand and he fell like a falling star. 

* * *

There had been no hushed muster in the South. Instead one moment Erethon had ventured outside the wards to gather seeds from the withered cherry-tree, the next he was racing for his life with the wargs of Isengard on his tail. As deadly as elves in a wood, the wolves loped behind him, long shapes, shadowed and grey, their eyes like yellow fire, full of bestial thought. Arrows harried him, and he leapt up into the branches to evade them. Tucking his handful of cherry-pits into his tunic, he climbed one handed, hoping that the orcs would have lost sight of him. 

But the wolves had other senses than sight, they came to snarl about the base of his pine, standing upright in their eagerness to devour him, their claws against the trunk. Uruks already clambered up into the boughs behind him, and other orcs were swarming into the surrounding wood, so he could not run from tree to tree.. 

"Ha rhach!" Erethon pulled back, shot straight down into the red cavern of a warg's mouth, but even as it fell its rider was clutching at his ankle. With no time to reach for his knife he put an arrow through the grasping hand and kicked out, aware that even as he struggled others were scrambling after him, scimitars drawn. 

The maimed Uruk pulled itself up by its wounded hand and sank its filthy teeth into his leg, worrying it. Disgusted, he put an arrow through its eye. Blood fell from the treetops and the Wargs gave tongue, filling the night with their howling. Yet more of them poured into the woodlands, and five more orcs scuffled between themselves as they each tried to scramble into his tree at once. 

Gritting his teeth against the hot stab of pain in his calf Erethon cursed himself again and climbed. Right to the top he went, and looking down saw the orcs as thick upon the tree as blackfly on a stem of roses. Then he steadied himself and rained down death on them from the heights, knowing that when the last arrow was spent he would jump, and in his fall not only kill two or three more, but ensure that he was not taken alive. 

* * *

In the East there was a watchful peace, as wains drew out of Eryn Fuin and two new siege engines arose into ugly, oil-soaked menace just beyond bowshot. Both were trained on the City of Caras Galadhon, where even now unarmed women worked to heal the wounded. The city lay silent, awaiting the rain of fire. 


	14. Downfall

  


Chapter 14

* * *

Haldir twisted as he fell. The breath had been knocked from his body by the Fell Beast's blow, and he gasped in agony even as he tried to right himself. Branches lashed at his face and hammered him across the back, but he could not turn swiftly enough to grasp one before it was above him. Wind sang about his ears as he plummeted, and his chest burned with need for air. All was rushing and noise and blows as he burst in darkness through the twigs. At last he tumbled into the lower branches, and managed to hook an arm about one - staying his fall even as the speed of it wrenched his shoulder from its socket. Then Rumil was beside him, reaching down to pull him to safety on the bough. His brother's face was ashen, and the hand shook that smoothed his leaf-tangled hair. 

"Rumil," he said, and the word came out as a gasp of pain. It did not grow easier to breathe, and darkness quavered behind his eyes, "I cannot..." He coughed, and blood filled his mouth with a taste of copper and salt. "Can't..." 

"Give him to me!" Orophin shouldered Rumil aside and took Haldir's uninjured arm, wrapping it about his own neck. "Cling on to me Haldir," he said, "You must to the healers at once, only hold on to me until we reach the ground." Yet he did not leave go of his brother's hand, and that proved well, for by the time Orophin reached the forest floor Haldir could think of nothing but the terrible struggle to draw air into his body, the choking, drowning sensation of his throat filling with blood. Each time he gasped a knife of his own bone was driven further into his lungs. But for his brother's clutch he would have fallen again, and he felt it - a sensation of releasing, descending into an endless cold. 

"Thilevril!" Orophin was calling above him. He opened his eyes and saw, very white against the night's utter pitch, the face of a lady who seemed otherworldly as a Vala to his failing sight. He struggled to speak - to tell her he drowned on dry land - but she looked grimly at him, and in her eyes the light of long-dead trees still shone keenly, ruthless as spears. 

"Hush now," she said, "Go to sleep." He had much to do; archers to lead, a war to win. But he could not breathe, and her will was the stronger. So he let go and fell again, and this time there was no pain. 

* * *

Erethon's last arrow was set to the string. He fired downwards, into the face of an uruk whose claws were almost on him. The creature tumbled, snarling, grabbing out at the orcs below it with a grip that pulled them from the trunk as it died. Even motionless, its weight and limp body crashed into its followers and brought many down behind it. Erethon smiled. Fifty orcs with twenty arrows was not so bad a tally. He would yet have something to boast of in Mandos. Looking out towards the West he hoped for a star, and at that moment the cloud over Lorien shifted, and moonlight drenched the crawling orcs with pale, pale silver. 

The treetops of Lorien tossed in a breeze called by the Ring of Adamant, and Erethon felt wonder. Like Elwing, perhaps, if he flung himself out he could transform to a gull and sail on white feathers over the silver and sable trees, with the light of Telperion's last flower sleeking his wings. It was a good time to fly. 

There came the whine of wings, but out of the wood streamed not birds but arrows; white fletched shafts with tips that glimmered like ice, and he did not know if he felt relieved or disappointed as the orcs began to fall from his tree like overripe fruit. He could see now his own folk slipping amidst the boughs like grey shadows, surrounding him, moving swiftly, ever moving so they might not also be trapped. Then Merethir's cavalry surged from the shade like a dam breaking, taking long spears against the wargs. 

"I was not aware this song had a repeated chorus," said Merethir, stilling his horse beneath Erethon's tree and looking up, his armoured fist raised in ironic salute. 

"It grows wearisome, I admit," said Erethon, embarrassed at having been rescued _twice_. Then he reached for the quiver on the nearest orc corpse and pulled the filthy flights into his own hands. His mood changed at the thought - he had been light as a seagull wheeling on a sunlit wind, but now his face grew hot, and he was wroth at the army of Mordor for discomforting him. Taking aim and letting fly, he watched with satisfaction as a little sneaking _snaga_ fell, impaled by the orcish arrow. "But let us now change the tune," he said fiercely. 

* * *

Leofwyn awoke from drab dreams as Oswy scrambled to his feet next to her. As with the baby she had never quite lost the habit of listening for him, even though she slept. Night was a weight of lead upon the healer's tent and pressed like a closing fist on all the shadowy trees about them, but in front of Oswy stood Calandil. Torchlight leapt over the elf's gold-wound hair, and he was all amber and flame himself - like a spirit of fire alight in the deadly dark. She saw that he was in mail which seemed to flicker with light like the firebrand, and girded with a sword, and her heart stilled a moment, as she remembered the bitter truth upon which this warrior beauty was built. 

"Nnh!" said Oswy, rubbing the sleep from his eyes as a child might, and she wanted to cry out and cling to him. _Have not I lost enough? My son will stay with me! He will stay!_

"Another attack comes," said Calandil, without gentleness, "Arm yourself and come." 

But Leofwyn was of the people of Eorl - a stern folk, loyal to their lord, so she let the fear straighten her back, and closed her mouth on protest. She handed her son the leather jerkin which went beneath his mail, and watched him lace it with an impassive face. His eyes were on her, and she knew he sought for his own courage. She would not take away his strength with weeping. "Hold up your arms," she said, and lifted the shirt of steel rings to lower it over him. _May a mother's blessing protect you, little one._

She took Oshelm's sword, on the belt she had embossed for him with loving work and painted with galloping steeds, and hiding the tremble of her hands, she put it around his waist and buckled it. _I release you into the protection of Bema. You were never mine, you only sojourned with me for a while. Go to your fate._

Bending down slightly she kissed his forehead, as she had done so many times when he was but an infant, to soothe a wounded knee, or one of childhood's many disappointments. "Defend your lord," she said, "And do honour to your father's name." 

_And come back._

"I will, mother," he said, solemnly. Did she look close enough, she could see all the words unspoken in his gaze, but she would not ask him to say them, lest it unman him, and at last he smiled awkwardly, and walked away. She watched him out of sight, the Healer's tent still around her as other women did the same with their own loves, their own children. Then she bit back the cry of anguish and turned, to do what needed to be done next. 

* * *

Oswy mounted and accepted the winged-moon banner of an elven king whose name even now he had not learned. The cavalry of Lorien drew up in two forces just beyond the dust and ash of the borders. Lamplit, the elven warriors were outlined in shifting silver as light spilled down the sleeve of a mail shirt, stroked the smooth edges of helms and the long, black brilliance of unbound elvish hair. In the Mordor darkness it was as though stars themselves had come to earth, and armed themselves to do battle. 

Beyond the slot of withered ground, where the stumps of blackened trees held up broken fingers to the clouded sky, the army of Dol Guldur seethed. Many torches flared among them, and bathed them in a bloody light. There he saw creatures who had haunted childhood nightmares, now made real, and he felt a horror, as though their very being undermined the goodness of creation. Cold was on him, and above the heads of all circled a Ringwraith, neither living nor dead. Terror flew with it and blanketed the earth beneath it, like the vapour of fear that flowed from the deathly halls of Dunharrow. But this pursued Oswy with malice, having seen his face. 

"You take that one," Gentling his horse with one hand, Lord Celeborn raised the other and pointed at the closer siege engine. Calandil, who sat his horse beside him, frowned. 

"Lord, I have not your woodcraft," he said, "Though I reach it I can do nothing to it." 

At that Celeborn smiled, like the gleam on the edge of a sword, "That, the commanders of Khamul's army do not know. Lay your hand on the machine and recite poetry if you will, and they will not dare use it again." 

Even beneath the oppression of the circling wraith, Calandil laughed at the thought, and wheeled away. And Oswy saw his wing of cavalry go flying across the darkened ground as a swan in flight. 

Then horns were blown and to a sound of steel and silver the elvish host leapt upon their enemies, and Oswy was born among the charge like a mote in a swift stream, while the banner he bore snapped behind him and the white gems of its device flamed like vengeful stars. 

But the enemy knew their tactic now and were prepared. This time the orc archers aimed not for elvish knights but for their horses, and the arrows were tipped with crescents of steel that made a wound the size of a child's hand where they touched. 

In front of Oswy a horse stumbled, fell, its proud neck arched as it screamed in pain. Its rider - an elf in green livery stitched over with snowdrops - leapt to safety as it fell, and one of his companions reached down to help him spring up upon his own horse. Wargs closed in on the fallen animal and rended it to pieces, stood eating and snarling at one another, even as their riders lashed them to rejoin the fight. At the sight of the fallen beast a slow fury began in Oswy, and he spurred his own steed faster, drawing his sword, and joining his cry with the voices of the elves. "Gurth an yrch! Gurth an glamhoth!" 

It was fortunate that the machines were set up so close to Lorien. Had they been further there would have been little hope. As it was, more than half the force was unhorsed by the time they turned, the device left disabled behind them. 

Stabbing down, Oswy drove his sword through the gaping mouth of a warg. It thudded to the soaked ground and, for a moment, he was left without any opponent. He looked out over the roil and filth of the orcs with hatred. There, on his right, speeding towards the safety of the Golden Wood was the gleam and glimmer of Calandil's force, a brightness about it. Like spring after winter, or the dawn after a night of grief seemed Calandil as he cleft his way through the foe. A glad lord, alight with gold. At the sight Oswy began to smile, but the expression faltered and turned to horror. A weight as cold as snow settled at his chest and his heart iced over, as part of the night shifted, drew into focus and became a faceless king of ghosts, flying on darkness. 

Air rushed and hissed in the downdraught of the dwimmorlaik's wings as it descended like a hammer upon Calandil. The bright lord raised his shield - and it was shivered to pieces in the grasp of the fell beast's talons. Then, as the elf-lord struck out with his axe, the bolt of an Uruk crossbow came from the shadows and pounded into his shoulder. Mail links burst apart. The shaft burrowed deep. Blood bloomed on the bright steel. 

"No!" Oswy wheeled and charged towards Calandil, seeing as he did so Celeborn turn too, like a white wave, and drive towards his friend. Swift were the paces of the elvish steed, and Celeborn was beside Oswy when a wicked arrow, shaft as thick as his thumb, flew from the dark and gored a fist sized hole in the flank of Oswy's mount. Oswy cried out as Peada stumbled. Unable to relinquish either banner or sword he was thrown over the horse's head, hit the ground. The pain was breathtaking, but he had not time to feel it. As he scrambled to his feet he felt a hand seize him, and he almost hewed it before he saw, through streaming eyes, the sleeve of icy mail scattered with small cold stars.

Celeborn lifted him and set him before himself, and if possible the elvish horse galloped faster, hooves flying, barely seeming to touch the ground as orcs fell before Lorien's wrathful lord as though before lightning. 

But the Nazgul's beast had closed its maw about Calandil's broken shield-arm. It lifted and shook him, its teeth making deeper wounds even as he bled from the bolt. Then it dropped him to the ground, and mantled over his fallen form like a carrion bird over its prey. The monstrous head raised, shrieking its triumph. 

Oswy was filled with rage, but his terror was the greater, for the closer they drew to Khamul the Sorcerer the more evil, the colder and more deadly grew the spell of fear that swept from him. Though Oswy hated himself for his weakness, and he hated the wraith for taking away his courage, still his hands grew slack, barely able to clutch at the precious standard. He turned his face away and closed his eyes, and tears ran over his cheeks, warm and shameful. 

Then, still at the gallop, Celeborn seized an orc and slaying it he plundered its quiver and bow, shredded the air about the dwimmorlaik with arrows. Remembering, perhaps, the wound Elien had dealt his steed, biding his time til the archer should be again unarmed, the great shadow-king withdrew, rising up into the darkness from which he came, and Oswy and Celeborn dismounted and came at last to Calandil's side. 

He lay twisted on turf torn and muddied with blood, his bright hair sodden and filthy, his eyes wide with surprise, and focussed on nothing in this world. 

"No..." said Oswy again, hopelessly, and "Baw," said Celeborn, kneeling to take the broken form into his arms. "Mellon nin... gwanur nin. Avo firo, baw." 

* * *

Notes

"Gurth an yrch! Gurth an glamhoth!" = "Death to the orcs! Death to the din-horde!"   
"Baw. Mellon nin, gwanur nin. Avo firo, baw." = "No...don't. My friend, my chosen-brother, don't die. Don't." 


	15. The Challenge

Haldir awoke, and pain told him he was even now still embodied. It was a bruising hurt to fill his chest with air, but little more. He moved his hand and touched strapping across his chest and shoulder, holding him tight as a moth inside its cocoon. Distant sounds of battle told him he had not been taken to Caras Galadhon, but was in the smaller Healer's tent just within the Lady's wards in the North, where he had fallen. He could make no sense of the din of warfare, but closer he could recognize the soft, familiar sigh of his brother breathing. Opening his eyes he found Orophin beside him, stanching a lesser cut in his arm with hands that had become far too deft at dealing in blood. Older, his youngest brother looked of a sudden, having left behind the carefree joy of childhood, and Haldir mourned for that, more than he lamented his own hurts. 

Orophin finished his work, deliberately, then carefully took away the bowl of reddened water, his eyes lowered, the shade of his lashes making half moons of darkness on his cheeks. Above, the heavy, ink-black night had eased into sullen day. Though he could not see her, Haldir knew the Sun still danced her ancient path, and but for Mordor, light would even now be merry on the golden leaves of Lothlorien. He wondered how long he had hovered between death and life. Orophin's very silence told him it had been close. 

There came an outcry on the borders; trolls roaring like thunder in the mountains, the shrieking of orcs, the sound of elvish voices raised in denial and lament. _I am needed,_ he thought, and rolling onto his good side he began to push himself to his feet. Agony flowered behind his eyes. At his movement, Orophin returned, abruptly, and pushed him back. There was a new gentle inexorability about Haldir's brother, an authority he had not wielded as the youngest scout in a remote garrison, and Haldir yielded with feelings of mixed relief and frustration. "Tell me what is happening." 

"I will not," said Orophin, "For you are not fit to act on the knowledge, and it would torment you." 

"And your hints will soothe me how?" Haldir was alarmed. He pushed against the hand restraining him and was unpleasantly reminded that Orophin was stronger than he. "I have a right to know, and if my standing as your elder does not move you, then you _must_ obey me as your commander." 

"And as my patient, you must obey me," said Orophin and at long last there broke through the winter of his mood a small glint of mischief that spoke of new green shoots. 

"Who is in command of my archers? How fares the war? Oh, brother, I must know! Do not be so cruel to me with this unwanted kindness, but tell me." 

Where authority had failed, an appeal to Orophin's pity proved too strong for him to resist. He sat on the edge of Haldir's pallet, crosslegged as though they all three were at home and he was fletching arrows, or skinning the night's meal. His face - always a sketch of elegant bone - had thinned since the war began, and his smile seemed a cobweb thing, marvellous for its delicacy. 

"Rumil leads the garrison," he said, "And is everything you have hoped for in him. But the war goes ill, Haldir. It goes ill." He looked away and grimaced as his sun-filled hair fell over his shoulder and face. "At first Tasariel would not engage them," he said, "Why waste our warriors when the wards stand?" 

"She is wise," said Haldir, approvingly. Speech had begun to draw lines of white pain along his chest and throat, and he was careful to conceal the roughness of his voice. 

"But her hand was forced." 

As Orophin spoke the lady Thilevril returned, bearing a pitcher of gleaming iron, dark as her coronet of plaits. She poured out a beaker full of liquid green with herbs and handed it to Orophin. Then she placed her hand on Haldir's forehead, and he felt her mind touch his, assessing his pain and the clarity of his thoughts. She favoured him with a distant look, and to Orophin said, "Make him drink it all," before moving on to the next wounded man. And though he knew he owed her his life, he could find little warmth in himself for her - so very high she seemed; a Noldo of an ancient type, who had learned less grace than the Lady Galadriel over the long years of her exile. 

"What happened?" he said. 

Orophin put a gentle arm about his back and helped him to sit; would have held the cup to his mouth too, had Haldir not pushed him away and taken it. The drink was strongly flavoured with a foulness that spooned honey could not hide. 

"The orcs brought poison with them," said Orophin, watching his face, "In great barrels. It seems the Enemy is aware of the Power that shelters us here and knows well what can and cannot pass the Lady's vigilance. They emptied it into Celebrant and Nimrodel, that it might befoul all the waters of Lorien. The river is full of death." 

He looked away, and his eyes darkened with memory, "You should have seen it move down the flood," he whispered, "White as mist that eddies in the paths of travellers, swirling and clinging - and the reeds browning as it touched, the flag-lilies fading, and all the little creatures of the stream lying dead upon the surface. The smell of it was sweet, Haldir, sweet as almonds, but oh, the fruit of it was bitter!" 

Each time Haldir believed he had divined the depths of enmity Sauron held for the elves, the enemy surprised him by being yet more vile. Unable to reach his foe, the Dark Lord made war on the land itself; slew trees, filled rivers with poison, killed the very earth beneath their feet, knowing they would starve and burn and choke with it, surrounded by orcs, unable either to endure or to escape. The hatred was ...more than he could comprehend. "Yet there is the spring upon Caras Galadhon," he said, grasping for hope, "We may take water from there, where they cannot reach, and so survive." 

But tears stood in Orophin's eyes. He shook his head. "Messengers have come from the south. "Even now the Lord fights a force equipped to hurl fire upon the city. If he cannot prevail Caras Galadhon must be abandoned. The folk will flee into the forest, thinking they can live there untouched, but this the Enemy has foreseen, and even the forest itself he has poisoned against us. 

Foul though the drink of herbs had been, it had not filled him with such nausea as this. "So Tasariel is forced out to prevent them from bringing more? In the hope that the river will speed the taint away and cleanse itself, should no more be added?" 

"Yes," said Orophin, "They have wainloads of the vile drench to pour upon us. Our warriors are holding them back from the riverbanks. Just. But the days grow darker, and every moment the wraiths grow more burdensome, and our strength wanes. I fear for the land, which has no Mandos for refuge. Who will protect it, if we are gone?" 

"I must..." Haldir yawned even as he struggled to get to his feet, "I must return to the fight." He wondered how he would draw a bow with a dislocated shoulder, and decided he would manage - he had reason enough. But Orophin took hold of his uninjured arm and pushed him down once more, and it felt good to lie back - he was so tired of a sudden. The world had begun to take on a texture of dreams, and figures walked there from memory and song. He saw his mother standing by the bedside, and knew he walked the borders of sleep, for she had died many years ago. In rest, urgency and grief eased. He turned to his brother and found him haloed in dream sunshine, dappled with the shadow of remembered leaves, long ago drifted into soil. 

"We knew you would say this," said Orophin, and gave a small, weary smile, "That is why you have been given a draught to make you sleep. You are not fit to fight, my brother." 

But in the hinterlands of slumber Haldir had an idea which seemed to him good. A way of surrendering to comfort, but still fighting on. A way of helping Orophin back into the saddle of warfare at a time when Lorien needed every warrior it could muster. "You must be Haldir for me," he said. "I..." he yawned again, "Will be Orophin and stay at the healers, and you will be Haldir, and do the deeds I cannot." 

It seemed an elegant solution. Under the balm of sleep everything seemed possible; victory, even laughter. "I would not have the Lord say that all I did in this war was fall from a tree." 

"He would n..." said Orophin and stopped short, reflecting that Celeborn would no doubt say exactly that, the next time Haldir gave him cause to be displeased. He reached out and brushed Haldir's hair back with a hand that smelled of yarrow and wormwood, and at the touch Haldir felt also the brush of his brother's thoughts. Fear and shame for that fear, and repugnance of war, but also the deep, cold wellspring of his love for the land, shaken by the enemy's cruelty. Orophin's lips whitened as he forced himself into bravery. But then he pressed a hand against his mouth and nodded. "I will be you," he said, in a small voice, "If you will be me and remain here. At least until you are well." 

"Good," said Haldir and reached up gingerly to clasp his brother's arm. 

"I will not...I will not make you a hero," said Orophin uncertainly. 

"No?" Haldir smiled and tightened his grip a little, "Yet I am already proud." 

* * *

On the battlefield close to the city of the elves, Oswy moved a little apart from his Lord. The enemy had followed the remnant of Calandil's force, or drawn away to fight Celeborn's knights whom he had outpaced and even now were trying to force their way through the press to return to him. Briefly they were alone, on a field beslimed by black blood, piled with the dead, under a sky the colour of decay. 

Celeborn was bowed over his friend, speaking words too soft to hear. His back was to Oswy, and the mail and unbound hair were like curves in a waterfall, clean and bright, frozen by sudden winter. In all the battlefield he seemed the only thing on which the light dwelled. From all else it slid, ashamed, but on him it lingered, glimmering, and as Oswy watched his tears blurred into silver before they fell. 

There came a silence. A deadly thing. And darkness came down out of the air on wings of shadow and stretched hide. Mantled in black, the ghost-king descended between Oswy and his Lord, and it was as though Oswy had been struck blind. His heart laboured with terror. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, so that he could not breathe, and he was sick with fear. Stench flowed from the Nazgul's beast, clouding his mind, filling his heart until he desired only to fall, and grovel in the slick of blood like the worm he was. 

Then, with a sound like tearing silk, Khamul drew his scimitar, and it was black, serrated as a saw and coated in an oil of poison. But Celeborn did not stir, and it seemed he wept and did not know his peril. 

Oswy opened his mouth to cry out warning, but words would not come. _'Third time is the charm',_ his heart spoke in Calandil's voice, and he remembered the bright lord's words with a stab of sudden courage. Here was the foe who had ended that beloved life. Here was his opportunity to repay each small kindness, each gesture of trust. _'Protect your lord and do honour to your father's name'_ Leofwyn's grim face, filled with desperate bravery, pierced the darkness on his soul, and he lurched to his feet. His hands shook, and the hilt of his sword fell from his slackened grip, but white light gathered in the pearl moon of his banner, and in its radiance he managed to take it up and lift it as a spear. 

The claws of the dwimmorlaik came down like a landslide upon Celeborn. He turned, too late, dazed with grief and with his hands empty, to find the maw coming upon him like a cave of spears. But at that moment Oswy thrust the blade of his banner deep into the beast's hindquarters and grounded the butt as he would have done hunting boar. Its recoil and struggle drove the metal far further than his own strength would take it. 

The creature screamed, its hoarse, croaking cry full of agony and bloodlust. It spread its great pinions - the web of leather and horn, and sprang into the air. Oswy knew it would drive down upon him as it had Elien. The iron talons flexed and reached for him, and from the Morgul-wraith on its back there came a whisper, a chanted curse that froze his blood. Fear assailed him. He cringed, and all hope of defending himself left him. Beneath the spell, his body shook and though he struggled with all his might he could not move. "My Lord!" he said, "Please..." 

Celeborn turned his back and strode away, and for a moment despair rose up in Oswy and blotted the world from his sight, as he knew himself abandoned, as he knew that all the tales had been true, and the elves were as treacherous as he had always thought, and himself an utter fool for thinking otherwise. 

But the Lord of Lorien had only sought his horse, and the weapon that lay across his saddle, its blued blade and silvered edge alight in the deadly dark. _Meliant_ was its name, gift of a goddess. Now he returned and stood between Oswy and the Nazgul, planting his feet, hefting the great axe in both hands. "You owe me a reckoning, Khamul," he said, and though his voice was level his eyes were alight with fury, "For you have slain my friend, who trod this earth many thousands of years before you were born to blight it. I will have justice for him." 

Darkness and emptiness lay within the hood of the Nazgul. Invisible and terrible, the gape of cloth, which was its only face, turned towards the elven lord. From the shadow issued a thin, chill voice, full of scorn. "Celeborn of Lorien," said the wraith, "Do not presume to challenge me. Long you have cowered behind the skirts of women. Run back to your wife's protection ere I take you and turn you, and set you among my forces as a very minor orc." 

Then Celeborn threw his head back and laughed. He passed the axe from hand to hand, so that the head of it made an ocean wave of moving steel, gleaming and flickering in its own light. "Lasto al lalaith nin," he said, "Your wit is as withered as the rest of you, Secondborn. Come, take me then if you can." 

* * *

As a hawk stoops upon its prey, skin wings folded, the dwimmorlaik came plummeting from the sky, and the wind of its speed snapped the banner in Oswy's hand, hammered him with foulness. He saw beak and claws, an onrush of night; nightmare clothed in flesh. But then Celeborn struck, and _Meliant_ sliced swifter than flight through the creature's chest, cutting bone and muscle, severing the spine. The beast fell from the air cleft in twain and hit the ground in ruin, dead wings flailing, its jaws chewing only air. 

Calmly Celeborn stepped away from the twitching thing, and his dark eyes were fell and cold. But the Sorcerous king was not slain so easily. Khamul arose from the death of his steed as a storm arises about the mountain peaks. Tall he was, and black, and crowned with lightning. In his right hand he bore the cruel scimitar, and in his left a long pale knife that glistened with a wan glow. But a greater weapon than these was the horror of him. It infected mind and heart, and blasted sight, so that Oswy knew that never again would he close his eyes without seeing a darkness of malice in which flames licked, as if they were a watchful Eye. 

The Nazgul cried out in a voice that was no longer human. A note of shrill despair and hatred, a voice of acid and venom. And far off, faint but evil, floated back the call of the wraith who flew over Moria. It turned and sped down the wind towards them - the blast of its presence going before it like a winter storm. But even as Khamul called for aid he had lunged forward, and the Morgul knife skittered over the sleeve of Celeborn's mail, trailing strange sparks. The elf-lord brought his hand up. Gauntletted, he trapped the brittle blade and broke it against the Nazgul's own armour. The thrust of Khamul's scimitar he caught on the haft of his axe. Runes shone white as he shoved the Ringwraith away and leapt back, gaining enough space to bring the great weapon to bear. 

Khamul hissed, his breath a moving darkness on the air, and a miasma of despair and terror; the very scent of the void spread from him. Oswy's sight blurred and his heart numbed and faltered. He fell to his knees and felt the wraith tower above the battle like a looming cliff. Khamul would strike like a landslide, like a weight of falling hills. 

The storm wrack, which speeded the second Nazgul towards them, tore apart the clouds and for an instant light fell about the form of the elf-lord as he stood in the shadow of evil. His mail and hair and the blade of his axe blazed with silver, pure as stars. Then Celeborn stepped, brought _Meliant_ down, and the sweeping, almost languid stroke sheered through the steel plates of the wraith's mail, and the unseen body beneath it; through shoulder and backbone and hip, and out, turning for a second stroke that would have quartered the creature had it still stood. But Khamul had fallen. Sudden, nonchalant as that, there was nothing left of him, but a stain on the breeze, a heap of armour and a empty black cloak, neatly cut in two. 

At the wraith's defeat the darkness that lay on Oswy's eyes lightened, and the deep cold about his heart warmed, slightly. He reached out to touch the severed cloak in wonder. Had it gone? Had it truly gone? And from the fabric there rolled, as if by chance, a little ring of gold, set with jasper, red as blood. Gleaming, brave and beautiful in the new light, it was of a size to neatly fit upon Oswy's finger. 

Oswy looked at it. It seemed right to him to take this token in memory of his father, of his slain people, and to bear it in the knowledge that vengeance was sure. Close to, it called to him, and he saw a future in which - with its strength - he became a great Lord, a leader of both Men and Elves, immortal in song and story, powerful and benevolent in rule. 

Kneeling, he reached for it. But as he did so, Celeborn stepped on the ring and ground it into the dirt beneath his foot. Then Oswy was furious, with a sudden, violent rage he did not recognize in himself, and he leapt up, hands clenched. "It is mine! It came to me!" 

Celeborn looked around. At the Nazgul's fall, a dismay had come upon the orcs, and his wing of cavalry burst now from their ranks and galloped up to surround their lord and the young Man, his esquire. Their bright eyes fell on Oswy and he felt their gazes as though they were tracks of ice on his skin. Brief had been his respite from fear, for now he feared his companions. "Oswy Oshelming," said Celeborn sternly, "It has come to you - and yours is the choice whether to take it up or not. Only think, Khamul himself was a Man once, and it was this very ring which turned him into the spectre of horror you have seen. If you take it, you will become as he was. Is that the future you desire? It is the only promise this ring can fulfil." 

Oswy had grown to manhood knowing that elves speak no truth, nor can they be trusted, and that childhood belief was strong in him now, overcoming all the moments of awe and fellowship he had felt for them. He wanted the ring. He wanted it with a desire that filled his mouth with the taste of metal and salt. It pulled at him as the bogs of the Entwash pull at men's feet - depthless, hungry. Surely Celeborn lied, and Khamul was as he was long ere the ring came to him. 

"What would you do if I took it?" he said, and his voice sounded strange in his ears. 

The elf's fair face was grave and certain, limned with light, ungentle. "I would kill you, Oswy," he said, "And - should we meet again beyond the boundaries of this world - you would thank me for the mercy." 

* * *

Note:  
'Meliant' = 'Melian's gift'.  
'Lasto al lalaith nin' = 'Listen to my laughter.'  



	16. Some Successes

  


Chapter 16

* * *

Erethon paused, sensing a change in the air. A wolf bayed at the foot of his tree. His hands felt unclean from the splintered shafts and filthy fletchings of orc arrows. His quiver was empty but for one gleaned flight, and he knew he should fall back, pick through the corpses and arm himself once more. All was dim about him. Below him Merethir sat wearily on his lathered stallion, and the knight's armour was now as dark as the day, and dripped blackly. Still Erethon's heart stirred within him, urging him to climb into the free air above the trees, to look out. 

He slung the bow over his shoulder and ran swift from bough to bough, climbing ever upwards, until at last he stood amid the frail tops of the trees and was lashed by a bitter wind streaming from the snows on the Redhorn gate. Leaves tore from the twigs and went whirling in the gust - a sinuous rush of bright colour against the Mordor fume. Lorien's canopy seethed like the sea. 

Watching the battlefield below, Erethon saw Calandil's cavalry come winging home, a trail of brilliance through the slick of Dol Guldur's army, and there, like a star at rest in the night sky, stood Celeborn amid the fray, and a shadow loomed over him. But even as Erethon saw it, the storm at his back grew wilder, and the clouds were rent apart, and sunlight fell upon his face like a blessing. Then the dark thing that faced his Lord was scattered, wailing, on the wind, and the trees of Lothlorien stood once more radiant in golden light. He drank in their beauty with the awe in which one who dies of thirst weeps over his first taste of water. 

But joy was short lived. Borne on the blast, there came out of Moria a great, winged thing, hideous with scale and sable claw. The lieutenant of Khamul, enraged, soared to his doomed master's aid. 

Above Erethon the Nazgul turned, blotting out the sun. Darkness engulfed the elf as he swayed upon his frail perch, and an icy shade fell on him. Then he thought of the monster, Ungoliant, who sucked all the light from the land of Aman, and he was in fear. "Elbereth!" he breathed. 

The name strengthened him. As the monster passed him by, racing down the torrent of air towards the battle, he reached for his last arrow and nocked it. Riding the thrashing tree tops like a bucking horse, he aimed and let fly. 

Of horn and metal was the Uruk-bow Erethon had salvaged, a torment to pull, and the arrow's head was made to gore horses - a crescent of rusted iron. It struck the beast in the neck, tore through the plates of its skin, burrowed into its throat. Blood fell on Lorien like a black rain. Then the creature crumpled and the wide wings of skin and stench folded, and the Nazgul plummeted from the sky like the bolt from an arbalest, straight upon the city of Caras Galadhon. 

* * *

Galadriel walked among the wounded in the healer's tents by the glade of the Fountain. Lamps were lit there, and the stretched white linen made a glimmer against the sky. Green and gold and white, the lanterns shimmered in the leaping water, and the harpist played and sang. _Even so it must have been,_ she thought, _In Beleriand in the days before the sun. Every light and every note of music a defiance against overshadowing evil._

She stopped to speak to Aelinoth and hear news of the healer's needs, sending her maids running to break open old stores, long untouched in days of peace. Smiling on those who recovered, she spoke gentle words of thanks and encouragement. With those who died, she lingered, bringing with her touch and her voice what absolution, what comfort she might. And she knew, from their open hearts and faces that her people loved her for it. 

It was a heavy burden. Their trust in her strength, their certainty that she was wise and powerful enough to protect them...they were an accusation. For on Galadriel a curse lay, that she would bring ruin to everything she began, and every work of hers would perish in destruction. In all her long life she had run from that curse; leaving Doriath and Nargothrond to the catastrophe she had foretold for them, hearing of it from afar because to look would have broken her heart. She had taken her contagion to Eregion, but from that great city too, rejected, she had fled, ere it fell. Never had she stayed, never had she lived through the hopelessness, the defeat. Never had she watched as decay and death took that which she had loved. 

Always she had sought to evade Namo's judgement. But not this time. 

This time she would end it. Already she had rejected her hearts desire, for which she left Aman; giving up the power and dominion of the Ring. Now she would drain in full the cup of punishment the Valar had set before her. She would stay, and she would see what terror, what desolation, would come upon the folk of Lorien for foolishly allowing her to rule them. She would stay, and she would suffer the loss of everything, not in hope of forgiveness - for long ago she had rejected the Valar's pardon, and could not expect to have it again - but simply in the wish to have all scores settled. In the wish that finally it would be over. 

Through the ring she bore she sensed, in twisted kinship, the release of Khamul from his long servitude - the spirit passing beyond the walls of the world - and she thought of her Lord, whose hand had brought this strange deliverance. _As a curse I have been to him also,_ she thought, and her smile was wan as she bathed the brow of a young elf feverish with orc-poison. _For lost and broken are both of our children, and now our marriage._ Even as Mandos had said, all that she wrought came apart in her hands and she ended with nothing. 

"Look! My Lady, look!" 

The harpist had risen from his knoll and stood, pointing up into the tormented sky. Above the tempest of leaves, wind tore apart the clouds. The sun shone out, and her merry, valiant light bathed the falling shape of a Nazgul upon his fell beast. Golden shadows played over the tumbling form, but could not make it fair. 

"My Lady it falls! It falls on us! What is there to stop it?" 

The chill of the wraith's presence went before it, and throughout the healer's pavilion the sick cried out in their sleep, as their dreams darkened, and their strength was sapped. Galadriel saw the Man, Cyn, sit weeping. His daughter stirred, nightmare pinching her round cheeks. She woke, wailing, and scrambled into her father's arms, but he would not hug her, he would not even raise his head and look at her, lost, sunk in the hopeless misery of the black breath. 

Then anger took Galadriel. Did this creature think to pass her wards simply by falling from the sky? She was not so limited as that. Long she had accustomed Lorien to her rule, and now it gave up strength into her hands. She filled herself with the white glory of Nenya, with the abundant life of the forest, and then she reached out, as she had at the feast, and sent a fountain of brilliance to cleanse the Ulari out of existence. 

Her power struck. She felt the wraith scream in terror at the touch of the light of Aman. She felt the call of his ring, and the answer - hundreds of miles away - from the Dark tower of Barad-dur. The Eye moved. At the Black Gate it had been focussed, watching the Captains of Gondor, puzzling over their reckless, suicidal march into his land. Watching with all the satisfaction of a cat toying with its prey before it eats. But now it turned to her and all the hatred of Sauron for the elves arced out of the basking, azure sky like lightning. She was seared and cold together, exposed, withering like a hand in flames. Distantly, she beheld Khamul's lieutenant floating like a speck of ash above her fire. But clearer to her was the mind of the undead king, suspended in torment between the sharp edges of her will, and Sauron's command. Unexpectedly, pity filled her, for she understood the wraith all too well. 

_Go, _ she thought, as a blizzard of coruscating light scoured her mind, shook her body. She felt that she must burst in pieces, but still, within the radiance there was a strange, terrible peace, _Go, King of Men, to the doom you have been outrunning too long. You are weary and frightened, but now it is time to rest._

He had no more faith in the forgiveness of the Powers than she. He had to be pried, talon by talon, from his famished and broken life, and as she forced him to let go, she could feel Sauron's rage upon her in an agony of flame. But at last it was done. Open as she was, she caught the scene from the eyes of the onlookers, saw herself - slender and small - in the centre of the pillar of light. Lamps dimmed in her aura; trees washed too bright to hold colour, and for a moment all Lorien became white. At that instant, she felt the spirit of the Nazgul break, like a louse pinched between two nails. What was left she and Sauron shredded him between them. He was gone. 

She stumbled. The light flickered. The Eye pressed at her very soul and she pushed it away, wearily, ineffectually, while the Maia behind it took pleasure in the thought of breaking her. 

*NOT YET* said the Dark Lord. At their meeting in Eregion he had kissed her hand in elegant gallantry, and looked up from the gesture with a smile. His heartbreaking amber gaze had drifted gently to her husband, to her children, marking them. Loathing had struck her then, the first foretaste of a revulsion that had darkened her life for a thousand years. It seemed the sentiment was mutual. *FIRST I WILL SLAY ALL THOSE YOU LOVE, AND TREAT WITH YOU AS I DID WITH YOUR DAUGHTER. ONLY THEN WILL I ALLOW YOU TO BEG ME FOR DEATH." 

"My life or death is not yours to give," she said, faintly, and calling all the strength of her fea into her hand, she built once more the wall she held against him in her mind. 

"Lady? Are you...?" 

Galadriel opened her eyes, expecting to see a ring of flame, the hot, black slitted pupil of the Eye of Sauron. Instead there fell about her - fragile as ash - the drifting dirt that was all that was left of one of the Nine. 

"I am well," she said, and straightened her back. "I go now to the mirror glade to see how the war progresses. I do not wish to be disturbed there." 

Aching, she turned away. The looks of awe which followed her were little balm to the feeling of being charred black within. She wondered where Celeborn was; if he yet lived. And for a moment she wished it had been the Nazgul who had triumphed, she who had been scattered on the wind. 

* * *

Celeborn stood on the field of battle and watched as Oswy struggled against the call of Khamul's ring. With one part of his mind the boy could see him, standing poised and intent above the power that should rightfully belong to Oswy. The ring of a king of Men, a strength only Men could wield, a glory which no elf had the right to withhold from him. Clumsy in his own body, Oswy stooped down and picked up his father's sword, which he had let fall in his terror. If only he bore the ring on his hand! Then this sword would never again be treated with such disrespect, for he would be afraid of nothing. Nay! But the servants of evil would fear him! He would take the sword of Oshelm and cleanse Rohan, cleanse the world, of liars, of those who were jealous of Men's dominion, all those who by trickery and dwimmorcraft tried to hold back the golden dawn which rightfully belonged to his people. 

He shifted, brought the the sword up, and stepped, so that the fullared point hovered a bare hands breath from the elf-lord's unprotected throat. "Do not stand between me and what is mine." 

The edges of his vision were full of elves. Terrible they seemed now - their gazes bright and sharp as lances, their very stillness a threat of sudden, lethal grace. All watched him silently, but in more than one face there was contempt. It fuelled his fury at them, until he desired nothing more than to lunge forward and drive the steel blade into their Lord's neck. Hatred they might find for him then, but at least their contempt would be silenced. 

As the black rage boiled heavily in his chest a cry came from above. He looked and saw the second Nazgul come racing towards him like the onset of the end of the world. Evil it might be, but its power was awesome, and its vile, implacable will went out before it, filling him with certainty. He must have the ring. He would kill as many of the elves as it took, but he must have it. 

He bared his teeth, drew back the sword in preparation for the strike. The point wavered and flashed in the sunlight as he trembled. His mind might be set, but his body revolted from this, and his arm shook. An arrow went up - an arc of blazing silver above Lorien - and the second Nazgul fell, ruinously, upon the Sorcerous Wood. Light burst from the trees, whiter than the snow on Gondor's mountains, and was gone. Then Celeborn took the point of Oshelm's sword in the palm of his gloved hand and moved it gently aside. "Oswy," he said, "You swore to my service on this blade. Would you so dishonour your father's weapon?" 

In the face of the Lord of Lorien there was no disdain, only an understanding as clear and cold as a spear of ice. "Is this _you_, or is it but a foretaste of what the ring will bring you to? Do not let it do this." 

'"Is this you?"' the words rang in his head, like the breath of winter that stills a churning stream, grey troubled water becoming solid and transparent; a place to stand. This was not him. Where had the desire that now consumed him come from? He did not recognize it in himself. Was it possible that this seethe of hot and salt desire had been the essence of him all along? Was he so vile? _Is this me?_. 

_Father!_ he cried out, and saw - as if in dream - Oshelm. Arrayed in armour, the sun a sheen of gold across the mask of his helm, his yellow hair glinting on his shoulders, and his eyes so like the sky it seemed they held heaven's light. "I did not raise you to break your oaths, or betray your allegiances, my son." 

_Father..._ Whether dream or vision, Oshelm placed his hand on Oswy's wrist, and for a moment the boy felt it. He felt his father's touch on his skin. 

His arm ached and fell, and his grip slackened on the pommel of Oshelm's sword, leaving Celeborn holding it by the blade above the muck and blood of the battlefield. Oswy's eyes filled with tears, and the image of Oshelm blurred, wavered. _No! Wait!_ But it was gone - a trick of his mind, no more; a phantom of his need for aid, the true expression of his heart. And he thought, dazed, _I am Oshelm's son. Leofwyn's son. What more power do I need?_

He gasped, and felt his mind resettle in his body, the devouring lust for the ring gone, a strange, shaken peace in its place. How had he come to this? Thus Khamul must have fallen, and the other, from whom the ring had taken even his name. "Oh," he staggered, finding Ardil at his side, supporting him with a troubled look. "Oh...what happened to me? I am so..." he raised his head and looked at them all - his companions in arms, his Lord, "I am so sorry. So sorry. I knew not that I was so weak." 

A strange expression came over Celeborn's fair face, and his ancient eyes were full of secrets. "You are not weak, Oswy," he said, with certainty. "There are many Men and too many of the Eldar who had not the strength that you have just shown. Did he know, your father would be as proud as I." Turning the sword of Rohan in his hands, he offered the hilt once more to Oswy's grasp, and though Oswy did not understand the weight of sorrow that burdened the Lord's words, he recognized the gesture of trust well enough, and he felt again the need to weep. 

"I do not forget that you saved my life, Oswy Edhellon," said Celeborn, and he passed the reins of Calandil's horse to the boy. Calandil lay across the saddle-blanket, shrouded in a cloak of silver-grey. "Now come, let us take our friend home." 

* * *

Edhellon = 'elf-friend' 


	17. Many Injuries

Behind Orophin the cold waters of the Silverlode flowed sparkling from their icy spring. There had been mallow here, and the white trumpets of bindweed. Moorhens once had nested amid the reeds, otters played in the ripples, and fish, silver as the stream, gracefully darted through shadow and sunlight. Now the browned banks were choked with small corpses and elvish blood mixed with the stench of bitter almonds and decay as Tasariel's warriors fell one by one, protecting the stream. 

Beside Orophin his fellow archer Glorion took an Uruk bolt in the neck, and fell into churned mud, gasping. Orophin wanted no more than to stop, tend his fallen comrade, heal - or at least spare the long torment of half-breath and agony that was his passage into Mandos. He wanted to comfort - to make this foulness go away, at least for one person. But he could not. Instead he leaned down and took up Glorion's quiver, salvaging the arrows for his own need. Every flight that passed through his hands henceforward called him heartless, and the faint cries of pain beneath his feet were louder in his ears than the din of the attacking orcs. 

But he had no time for nicety or compassion. "Ware all!" shouted Tasariel, wheeling, drawing away from the lines of fighters by the river, putting distance between herself and some new threat. Orophin looked up from his suffering friend, and saw the huge form of a Moria troll as it ploughed through the orc's ranks towards him. It scattered goblins like a wind through leaves - they fell away from it, or were trodden on. Red was its mouth, open like a cavern in the thick, green hide of its face. The great arms were covered in scales thick as lamella, flexible as the skin of snakes. It carried a club like a young tree, and on its back was a vast skin, bulging with poison to dump into the stream. Its little eyes burned with berserk rage, red as its maw. 

Turning back, Tasariel drove her terrified horse forward with her heels, readied her lance, the point swinging down in an arc of fire. Her pennant was of cloth of gold, stitched with a many coloured sun. Her helm had taken one too many blows, and been discarded, so now the sable flood of her hair flew in the wind of her speed as she galloped towards the monster, and the spring light filled it with the glimmer of blued steel. 

Breast high to a mounted man was the keen tip of the lance. She spurred her steed on, couched the weapon, bracing herself for the impact, ready to drive the bright point and yards of heavy ash into the cave troll's unclothed thigh. She struck, all the weight and strength of her horse's charge behind her. And the lance shattered against the troll's impervious hide as if against a cliff. Swaying in the saddle, she tried to turn. Wild and white were the eyes of her horse, its nostrils wide. It reared, and as she struggled with the reins the troll brought down its club. Elven lady and mount both went flying, tangled together, fell motionless on the field - stunned, or slain. 

The troll let her lie, blundered towards the riverbank. Orophin gasped, looked about himself. All were already fighting for their lives against the renewed flood of orcs. Naught stood between the river and its bane, but only he. Then a foreknowledge of his own death came over Orophin and, as the monster shuffled closer, fear and grief fell away from him, leaving him calm, alone, in a moment of utter stillness. He forgot all but the beauty of skill, the rightness of the pull of his bow and the glory of arrowflight - straight and sure. His first shot took the troll in the mouth. 

There came a boom like thunder above his head and for a moment he thought the Valar were with them, and rain would fall, swelling the river, helping it wash away its taint, but it was only the gag and roar of the furious troll. It bit through the arrow shaft. Looked for him. 

As the brutish gaze closed over him, he felt a shock as though he had leapt into cold water. But his body moved of itself, nocking and aiming another of Glorion's arrows. He leapt back, let fly. Straight up, the shot burst, like one of Mithrandir's fireworks, aglitter with light, and pierced the creature's mad little eye. At the same moment, the troll's claw hit him in the side. He felt a great wave of heat, and the world lurched, but there was no pain, not yet. 

The impact had thrown him thirty paces from where he had stood. He flew, briefly, like one of his arrows, and hit the ground with a roll, effortless, blessing his brother's obsessive training, his perfectionism. Standing, he wondered what was the slide of liquid down his flank, his leg, puddling in his boot. A hand pressed to his ribs came away shining with blood. It seemed...amusing, as he pulled the bow once more, made another perfect shot, leaving the troll with wounds where eyes had once been, only the pale fletchings protruding from the sockets. 

At the sight, he came back to his own mind, and nausea crashed over him like a wave. _I did that._ Unforgivable, it seemed to him, to inflict such horrors even on a creature of the Enemy. 

Sightless, the troll turned about, looking for him, went brawling back among its own host, flailing with the club, crushing, trampling goblins, blind and enraged and unstoppable, and the army of Moria quailed before it. 

But Orophin took a step away, and dizziness assailed him. He looked down and saw the four great slashes, like the marks of a scythe, where the trolls claws had rent through clothes and flesh alike, and at the sight agony came welling out of the cuts like blood. He reeled further away, and his feet stumbled in slick dead reeds and mud. The ground was tipping, or he was. There was a moment of confusion, a rushing in his ears, and then he fell backwards, and the icy waters of Celebrant closed over him and swept him away. 

* * *

Calandil's body had been cleansed and dressed in finery, as though he went to a feast. He lay in a shallow grave, on a cloak of green silk, and was weaponless but crowned with flowers. Leofwyn watched as - one by one - the nobles among the elves drew close to him; touched or spoke, or sang, and went away, tearless but grim. On many of their faces she saw not grief, but bewilderment, as though even war could not reconcile them to the sheer wrongness of an immortal's death. 

They had chosen to bury him in the clearing of the fountain, beneath the eves of the trees. Noon was high in an azure sky and golden light lay on the small flutter of leaves. Shadows were green, and the air was cool and clean. The scent of growth and sap was strong. Falling like the notes of the fountain came the voices of many elves, soft and sad. But there was an edge on the beauty, a barb in every breath, for over the sweet laments could be heard the drums in the camp of orcs, and if the wind wheeled there came a stink from the burning borders and the choked streams. Evil surrounded all. 

Leofwyn looked about and saw pain, everywhere. Beside her Oswy stood, and his face was white and drawn, but he did not cry. Instead a trembling would sweep over him, and he would bow his head and shiver like a horse tormented with flies. Burning, hot as fever, were the hands she had clasped in joy when he returned to her, and his eyes had been full of shadows and shame. The elves who brought him to her had called him 'Edhellon', as though in some fell deed on the battlefield his name had been cut away from him, and he stood, indeed, like one lost, who cannot remember who he is. It had not taken long for her joy in his safe return to fade. Now she wished only that he had taken some common wound - some hurt of flesh that would heal swiftly - and not this injury to his soul that she did not understand and could not soothe. 

She had seen Galadriel stretch out her hand and pluck a Nazgul from the sky, burning him away to naught but ash, and thought to ask the Lady to spend that power in healing Oswy - until now. For Galadriel stood at the head of the grave as rigid and as still as one who walks in mortal pain, and Leofwyn saw that she took every death to herself. The Lady mourned as though she were the mother of every fallen warrior, grieved for each one with the anguish Leofwyn bore for her own son. She mourned as though she bore some blame in their deaths. Fragile, she seemed to Leofwyn suddenly, and the woman of Rohan could not bear to lay another grief on her. 

_I protect the witch of the Golden Wood_ she thought, surprised at herself, _As a good liegewoman should._ Yet how could she see such suffering and not be moved to pity, though it seemed the wren pitied the eagle? 

Even the Lord of Lorien, who stood by his Lady, and wept openly - as many of the lesser elves did - looked unwell; favouring his right arm. He too had slain a Nazgul, in a great blow of which Helm Hammerhand might have been proud. But it seemed to Leofwyn that even to stand against these evil creatures was a wound of its own, and not even the mightiest came away unscathed. 

Celeborn stepped up to the grave now, and knelt to take Calandil's hands in his own. "Navaer, calan dil nin," he said, quietly, "Greet my King from me. And tell my children I love them." He released the dead grasp and stood up, and at that moment Oswy gave a gasp beside Leofwyn and strained forward, his trembling like a palsy on him. She followed the line of his gaze, saw it locked onto Calandil's clasped hands. Through the loose cage of his long fingers she saw briefly just a glint of jasper and gold, and she guessed that at the last his Lord had pressed into his hands a ring to take into death with him. A final honour. 

But Oswy's notice was more desperate than seemed right for a mere touching piece of courtesy. "What is it, child?" she asked, frightened. He turned on her a look at war with itself, and she caught her breath, seeing the struggle in him. As a man obsessed with a forbidden maid, her son seemed to Leofwyn; torn and guilty, lustful and shamed. "Oh, Oswy, what have they done to you?" 

His gaze flinched from hers, strayed back to the grave where even now soil had been mounded like a thin sheet over Calandil's resting form, hiding the red-gold flame from view. "Mother...I..." His face was all supplication and fear one moment, and calculation the next, "It is nothing. I am well." 

Then elves piled the earth high, and on the top they planted a little seed the size of an almond. The sound of lesser lamentation ceased, and Celeborn and Galadriel sang together. And as they sang there sprang from the grave a silver shoot; a sapling mallorn, wand thin, and on each of its fledgeling boughs there rustled dark green leaves and a single blossom of gold, sweet with scent. It swayed in the wind from the mountains, defiant and new, as bright as the kind lord whose memory it cherished. 

"No..." said Oswy and yearned forward. Then he turned, and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes and groaned, as though overmastered by a terrible ache. "I don't want this! I don't want it!" 

Seeing him so, Leofwyn thought of Calandil's words, which her son had repeated in awe and thankfulness; 'You know now what to expect, Oswy, when you ride out against the forces of Shadow.' And for the first time she felt that the price for battling evil was too high, this injury too great, and they should, after all, have thrown themselves in Anduin and drowned. It would have been cleaner. 

"Would that this was over!" Oswy cried, in torment, "When will it end? When will I be at peace with myself again?" 

There was no answer she could give him, except for her own despair. 

* * *

Celeborn stood on the high talan and looked out. The sun shone, but on the encamped armies of orcs it made no glimmer, only picking out in harsh lines the vile shapes, the devices of cruelty and malice. Each squadron had now for its banner the body of an elf slain in battle - naked, abused, impaled - and looking on them he did not know what he felt - whether it was loss or fury so great it made him doubt he was still entirely sane. Twice ten thousand years he had dwelt in this world, and fought this battle, and still it went on! How much more? How much more did they expect him to endure? How many more of his friends, his family, would he have to lose before it was over? 

"The end comes," as if she answered his thought Galadriel stepped upon the platform and stood beside him. The smoke-stained breeze flattened her silver-grey dress against her legs and plucked at the crown of braids she wore. Slender and slight, and infinitely sad she looked, as weary as he. "See," she pointed, and he saw with a numb sickness that Mirkwood's borders seethed with orcs, working tireless as machines to build new siege engines. Already a fourth device crawled from beneath the web-tangled shadow, and Dol Guldur's armoured pits smouldered; spitting out the parts for many more, "We have bought only a breathing space before inevitable defeat." 

He closed his eyes and clenched his fists, and pain lanced from his right hand as though it were pierced with a dagger of ice. His arm was cold and only the sheer force of his will prevented it from lying dead at his side. Galadriel's touch on his shoulder was like the press of a glede against his flesh. "I thought to hear you laugh at that," she said, faintly, looking in his face as though she could find hope there. "Ever before you have laughed at such talk." 

Turning to her, he saw the scars on her soul - scoured and bleak and barren, as all things became that Sauron's black hand touched. She looked to him for the strength to go on. He, who had no burdens of foresight or perilous power, he should have resilience enough for both of them, courage enough for both. 

He reached up and loosened the tight knot of her braids, and the light of Aman, caught in her hair, washed over his Morgul-frozen fingers with faint warmth. How beautiful she was! And how much she deserved. The world - if it had been his to give - he would have laid gladly at her feet, for her comfort. But everything that was his had now gone before him into the West, and he had nothing left to offer. He looked away, failing her at last. "Today I have buried my laughter," he said. 

* * *

Haldir lifted the boathook in his good arm and fished another orc corpse out of the river. Silverlode swept around a great bend here and much floating carrion was washed upon its shelving beaches. Their decay too would render the water unusable, and so the maidens and the injured were occupied hauling this grim catch from the stream. It was ill work, for many a warrior he had once called friend he now drew out of the flood broken, and each dead face he saw seemed an accusation. _I should have been there._

A cry went up further upstream, and he saw the Lady Thilevril struggling to pull a body from the water. The grey cloak and armoury of Lorien he saw, streaming with liquid - and then the lolling head, and the wheat-blond hair; the cherished rare golden hair of his brother. 

Horror made a blur of the next moments, until by some chance he found himself by Orophin's side, lifting him onto a stretcher, Thilevril saying something meaningless to him, but all his thoughts focussed on the huge washed wounds that laid bare his brother's ribs. 

The Noldo woman spoke again. He ignored her, clutching onto Orophin's arm. This was not, could not be so. And his fault! 

Thilevril drew back her fist and slapped him stingingly across the face. "I said stand back, Nando!" 

He looked at her, bewildered, conscious that he should be affronted - he should feel something other than shock - but he moved away nevertheless, and her hands descended upon Orophin like a rain - gentle, encompassing. At her mental call her two helpers came running with bandages, and as he saw the maids dress the gaping cuts, some measure of thought came back to Haldir. _He is not dead?_

He caught the arm of one of the apprentices. "He is not dead?" and she shrugged him off, pouring out a tiny cupful of some drink colourless as the stream, whose scent was snow and green growth - like early spring. They lifted Orophin's head, and forced the cordial into him as Haldir had sometimes done for fawns left to die by their dams, and at the taste of it Orophin's eyelids pinched, and Haldir knew that he was indeed not yet dead. 

Thilevril's helpers chose that moment to draw away, and Haldir could no longer be restrained. He rushed forward and again clamped his hands about his brother's wrist, as though he could haul him away from death's grasp bodily. 

Orophin gave a weak sob and opened eyes black with drugs and pain. "Haldir?" 

Thus summoned Haldir held on tight and beamed. It was not so bad as he had feared after all! Orophin would live, would recover - and Haldir would never let this little one out into danger again. "I am here. Sssh! All will be well now. You're safe." 

"I..." Orophin struggled to focus on Haldir's face, "I wanted to say farewell. Where... where is Rumil?" 

"You will not!" _O Araw, O Elbereth!_ Had Haldir's stupid idea indeed come to this? Orophin had been safe at the healers - safe as it was possible to be in this darkness - and it was Haldir's doing which had brought him to this. Panic overcame him. "You will not say farewell. You are not going anywhere. Orophin, do you hear me, I forbid it!" 

Tears welled and leaked from the corners of Orophin's eyes, mingling with the river's damp in his hair. "Tired..." 

"Sleep then," Haldir begged, weeping in sympathy, his grip moving from his brother's wrist to the clammy hands. "And heal. I swore, remember? I swore I would hear no song before yours. Do not leave me in a world of silence! Little brother, I pray you, pity me. Pity me and live!" 

Orophin coughed, and his breath caught for a moment with the pain, so that Haldir's heart tore within him, fearing the worst. But then the younger elf opened his eyes once more and gave a sweet, despairing smile. He beckoned, and when Haldir leaned close he whispered, on a small thread of melody into the cankered air: 

"Swift, the arrow's sudden flight  
Across the burnished sky.  
Brave for a breath its arc so bright  
But even this must die.

Thou, my brother, from the light  
Behold me who has reached the mark.  
I beg you, hinder not the night  
But let me pass into the dark."  



	18. A Turning Point

* * *

The day had darkened, as heavy smoke crept once more from Dol Guldur and Moria, or billowed, brown, over the fields of Rohan. Thilevril looked down upon Orophin and saw that his face was sunken, and though fever still raged in him from the poisoned water which had entered his great wounds, he no longer tossed or cried out, and his eyes were shut. 

"Tell me he will live," said Haldir, pitiably, while the other brother, Rumil, sat at Orophin's shoulder and silently bathed the burning brow. "Tell me he will not die." 

She sighed, moved at last by the archer's grief, whose arrogance had long displeased her. "Were we in Lorien at rest, and the sun shone, he could yet recover," she said, as gently as she could, "But in this murk all our spirits sicken. Despair comes upon our strongest, and the eye of the mind is fixed on death as its only comfort." 

This part of her calling as a healer she hated. It was, perhaps, why she had been forced to grow so hard. Sometimes one had to be weapon-sharp to tell the truth. "Your brother yearns for light and peace," she said. "But unless this war is won soon, he will find it only in Valinor." 

* * *

Shadow slid over Oswy as the sky became a drab roof over his head. It seemed the fume muffled sound, for all noise fell heavy on his ear. The trees leaned over him, whispering and, though he was weary to the point of tears, he could not sleep. The ring of Khamul was gnawing on his heart and he could not turn his thoughts elsewhere. 

He tossed, unwound the blanket that swaddled him too tight, sat up, and folded his arms about himself, rocking. He did not want the ring. Truly he did not. He had no desire to become some foul, inhuman terror, whose presence brought all good creatures nothing but torment. He did not want it. 

Why then could he not stop the craving? Why had his whole soul focussed with blinding desire on a glimpse of red and gold he knew he had not been meant to see? Celeborn had buried the ring, in a place where no man of honour would go looking for it, and already the roots of the young mallorn must wind through the gold, holding the treasure down. Ere long that tree would be so mighty that even if he were to desire the ring - which he did not - it could not be dug from the sheltering earth, or pried from the grasp of treeroots and dead elvish hands. 

And that was good, was it not? 

He sighed and, getting up, he buckled his father's sword about his waist. Perhaps if he walked a little his body's weariness would solve this debate for him? 

Leofwyn slept, seizing this moment of respite in the war, while the orcs were leaderless and demoralized by the fall of the wraiths. Cyn, with the baby in the crook of one arm, and Gytha in the other, was chanting softly the tale of Baldor son of Brego, as though one fear would cancel out another. He looked up as Oswy rose, and his gaze was concerned. But he said nothing, only nodding, accepting Oswy's actions as one man to another, as a liegeman to his lord. It was a gesture of respect that Oswy might have treasured, had his mind not been elsewhere. 

For a while he strolled aimlessly through a tense, subdued Lorien. Naught could stop these people singing, but now the falling patter of notes was a rain of lamentation, exquisite, but desolate. And as Oswy walked, his feet led him without conscious thought towards Calandil's grave. He knew he was headed there from the moment he stood up, yet still it was a surprise. Had he not meant to walk anywhere else? 

The mallorn sapling rustled gently. Its trunk was a stripe of silver-grey against the gloom, and the blooms tossed fallow-gold under darkness. There was no other marker and the barrow was only a shallow swell of grass, already spangled with niphredil and daisies. Oswy told himself he was here to do his friend honour. He was here to remember a merry, generous life, even though it be of other kind than his. 

Kneeling, he placed his hand on the ground, and at once the power of the wraith's ring fastened upon him like a leech. He could feel the burn of it, the brightness - the glory - even through the living barriers of turf and tree. All else fell away. He had searched, and he had found. Or he had been found. _Here_ was what he had been looking for. Here lay his heart, buried alive in an elvish mound. At the thought he could almost feel it - earth in his mouth, dirt pressing on his eyes, the tree burrowing, worming, pressing at him, its roots holding him down, tearing him apart. He struggled, mindless with the need to escape. Darkness engulfed him. He strained for life, for light, for Lorien, and at last threw himself back, gasping. His heart raced and thundered in his ears. To breathe was a shock - he was not, after all, entombed. But if that was so, whence came this smell of soil? 

Shaking, he unclenched his fists and gazed as a murderer might gaze on the blood. His palms were black with earth, his nails broken and fingertips bleeding. Horror came on him. _I will not look. I will not_. But still his eyes lifted reluctantly to see the scar in the sweet grass, the spilled dark soil where he had scrabbled with his bare hands, where he had begun to dig into the grave like a wild beast digging for carrion. 

He reeled back. "NO!" _Tomb robber. Desecrator of the Dead!_ "No..." He did not want this. He did not! Staggering a few steps away he collided with another tree, slid to its base, curled like a child around the misery of bad dreams. For surely this could not be other than a dream. In waking life he would not try to unearth his friend's corpse, just for a pretty trinket. "I would not." 

Resting his brow against the mallorn's smooth bark he squeezed his eyes shut, rubbed his dirtied hands across the grass, but could not make them feel clean. "Bema! Help me! Help me!" 

But even as he called upon the gods a thread of his thought was saying that since he was already so dishonoured it could not make matters worse to dig a little deeper and take the prize he still desired. 

* * *

The talan swayed beneath Galadriel's feet. She closed her eyes and imagined it as the deck of a ship, taking her home. In memory she saw the green isle of Tol Eressea, a flight of swans above the rise and glitter of spray, vessels riding on the radiant waves like living jewels; her mother's kinsmen laughing at the tillers and the spread white sails. 

A memory that had begun as comfort became another torment. Did they live again, those mariners of the Teleri, slain by her cousins? Perhaps, after so many years, they had all come forth from Mandos, made new. But the stolen ships - those flying shapes of freedom that had seemed to skim as bright as gulls over the waves - they were forever lost. Burnt as the Lamps of the Valar, dead as the Trees. What ship _would_ now bear her back, whose family had wantonly destroyed such wonder? 

Leaving the past, she opened her eyes and surveyed the fruits of her decision to leave Valinor: A battlefield as deep in orcs as the sea was deep in water; the halting crawl from Mirkwood's borders of the latest engine of despair; her husband's back, turned to her, braced and tense with pain. Of all her deeds of pride in a long life she regretted most the blight she had brought upon him. How had she dared come and demand comfort from him on the day of his friend's burial? Did she not have her mirror, and Nenya's power to lean on, where he had only his own native toughness? It should have been she, upholding him. 

Drawn by an ache of love, she circled him, seeing his frown, the emptiness of the gaze fixed on Dol Guldur. Although she knew she should wish they had never met, that she had not brought the Doom of Mandos onto a blameless life, she was not yet selfless enough. Still this marriage was not an act she would undo, even if she could. 

Having run out of words to reassure, or to goad, she came close to his side. He did not stir. Not knowing what else to do, she put her arms around him and held him fast. And at the touch he took in one great breath - an Oh! of unbearable loss - and rested his head on her shoulder. 

"I know," she said without wondering what she meant, "I know." What else was there to say? Neither he, nor she, nor Lorien could endure much more. Caras Galadhon would be burnt, and the folk driven out to live among poisoned streams. Thirst and starvation would overwhelm all. The Golden Wood would remain impenetrable - for against her wards even Sauron could not come - but it would be the shut and silent inviolability of a tomb. A dead land, full of horrors. Even as she had said. She tightened her arms, glad he was here with her at the last, conscious of the rise and fall of his breathing, his slenderness and strength; the chill of his arm that lay about her waist. 

"Forgive me?" she asked, and at this moment that mattered more to her than life and death, "It is my curse that has brought us to this. We should never have come here, never agreed to rule. It is my doing that these folk will die, and I cannot ask for their pardon. But I ask for yours." 

At that, he raised his head, looking confused, bewildered, as though he had forgotten something important and now sought for it. Pulling away a little he turned and looked south. The orc army was thinner there, all the forces concentrated about Caras Galadhon and the springs of the rivers. 

Noticing he had not answered her, her spirit darkened within her. _Even he at the last cannot excuse me._ Bereft, she began to move away. But he stirred from thought then, pulled her back, encircling her with the warmth of his left arm. Soothed a little, she leaned into his side, and the posture reminded her of distant Eregion. Even so they had stood before their thrones in Ost-in-Edhil, facing down the rebellion. Close enough to take comfort, far enough apart that they could each defend the other. Celeborn had had Celebrimbor's sword point poised at his heart, she remembered, and she... she had faced Annatar's smug, gloating smile. 

"Justly you may claim to have begun the regrowth of the Golden Wood," said Celeborn, his voice growing in resolution as he spoke; feeling his way toward hope, "So perhaps Lorien may fall into ruin. But you cannot claim to have begun any of its people. They - against the Doom of Mandos or any other Vala - they may still be saved. Did we not bring the folk out of Eregion to safety here and in Imladris? We will do it again." 

"We had a refuge prepared then," she said, "Where is there to flee now?" 

He pointed with his chin, and she saw, but a little beyond the Southern borders, the windswept grass of the plains of Rohan, and, dark almost as the Mirkwood, tangled, brooding in its anger, the dim and mighty forest of Fangorn. 

"It is perilous." 

"Less so, I deem, than these armies. Even now those trees preserve some fondness for the Laegrim who woke them, and we have many of that kindred here. I do not believe Fangorn would turn us away. Are we not old friends? And will not we and the Onodrim be twice as strong together?" 

The wind blew from the South then, and their lost son's voice called out to them upon the moving air. As always, this honour the world had given Amroth - this salt in the wounds of grief - made Celeborn angry. His jaw tightened. He took hold of his streaming hair and tried to knot it behind him, his right hand clumsy, readying himself to begin one more desperate task. There was a moment in which Galadriel resented his sheer resilience, his stubbornness. In defeat they had at least shared some peace together. But then - from her pride, and for his sake - she found the will to carry on. She took the clip from one of her braids, put her arms about his neck and fastened back the long fall of silver from his face. 

"And when Sauron comes to Fangorn?" she said, her tone deliberately light, challenging this new resolve, "Is this not but a desperate attempt at borrowing time?" 

Laughter was still beyond him, but he did at least smile, "Has not our whole life together been lived on borrowed time? Yet it has been a long one. Let us have as many more years as we can grasp." 

He strode to the edge of the flet, and at that moment there came a silence. The wind ceased, the tree stilled beneath them. Arda held its breath. Even the orcs faltered and closed their howling mouths, looking up. 

Instinctively - the ring had become so much a part of herself in the last Age - Galadriel reached out to Nenya, needing its cool brilliance, its reassurance. She followed the Elven-Ring's power from one end of Lorien to the other, touching the injured, giving such strength as she could. Her mind beheld hawks, floating motionless on the sky, dragonflies, as glossy-black as galvorn, held still above the silver pools, suspended. The small words of growing grass and sap were silent, tense. Waiting. 

Then from the Ring of Adamant there came a sudden terror like a shriek in her ears. Sauron's terror. She felt his denial, his panic - a desperate reaching out of his will. It scrabbled through the metal, almost overwhelmed her. "No!" she cried, "You shall not have me!" But instead of the Black Hand - instead of the Eye burning in her mind - the band about her finger grew suddenly incandescent as the sun. Her protest became a scream. Pain lanced from her hand into her arm and shoulder, tearing, devouring. But it was as nothing to the agony in her fea as her spirit was ripped in pieces and cast into a pit of flames. 

Someone was tugging at her hand. Celeborn - trying to take Nenya from her. She struck him hard, clenched her fist around the torture. The strands of her power were growing weaker, unravelling like a tapestry slashed. Time escaped her grasp, drew away like a wave of the sea and turned, gathering power, gathering the centuries it had been denied, gathering history and bloodshed, taint and the swift mortality of Men. It built, rushed towards her, curved and broke over Lorien. The elder days were washed away and Lorien stood amid the poverty and the drabness of the Third Age, undefended. 

As though she had opened her wrists and the blood ran out to be washed away - so she felt, aching and numb. Power, colour, delight, meaning, all seeped slowly into grey. Like dying, but without its hope. _Dollen i Riw, dannen i lass._ Her eyes were closed and she wished for the Void, but it would not come. 

At last a mere discomfort - a crick in her neck - recalled her to herself. A self so diminished she could hardly recognize it. Was this all that was left of her? Surely she had been greater once, before time and tides and the surging strength of Celebrimbor's gift had worn down the granite of her soul. In this world of Men was she now so little? So worthless? 

Some pride yet remained. She was Lady of Lorien, a Queen in all but name, with a husband who loved her, and, even now, work to do. 

Opening her eyes, Galadriel found herself in Celeborn's arms. But it was no tender awakening. His left hand was knotted in her hair, drawing her head back against him, his right held a sharp, curved knife, with gentle, deliberate pressure against the great vein in her neck. 

Should she struggle it would doom her. She reached out, found his mind closed to her. Walled and guarded. She might, perhaps, break through that barrier in time, but not before he could slash her throat to the bone. The beat of his heart trembled with fear against her, but his hands were steady. "What are you?" he said. And if there was terror in his voice there was also no lack of determination. 

"I am Galadriel." 

"Prove it." 

Moving only her hands, she felt for Nenya's sleek band, the great stone like a fallen star. Humiliated, she took hold of it, pulled it off - and it felt as though she gouged out her eyes. As she dropped it onto the pale wood of the talan it rolled, sparkling as a trinket; all gold and brilliance and emptiness. Drained. Useless. 

She felt his gasp through her back, pressed against him. Then suddenly he let her go, reached down for Nenya's tear-like sheen, picked it up, watching her. She neither moved nor cared, except dully, as though the lack of care itself was a pain. 

Standing, with the glimmer of it in his palm, he sheathed the knife at last. The look of disbelief, and then utter wonder, was very like the look he had worn in fair Menegroth when first he gazed on her. 

A time passed in stillness, and then, with some satisfaction, Celeborn walked to the edge of the flet and dropped the flickering jewel through fathoms of air onto the forest floor. "I thought Sauron had regained the One," he said, gently, "I thought to spare you an existence as his thrall." 

"I know." Galadriel clasped her hands together, missing Nenya's comforting weight. It seemed even the beat of her heart had slowed, even her blood retained no vigour. All desire fled, except for the faint wish that he would go away and leave her alone. "But instead, this is the day we have long looked for. This is the day of our triumph. Against all wisdom Frodo has succeeded. The Ring has gone into the fire, and both it and Sauron are no more." 

Celeborn's wonder passed into a happiness that left his face looking youthful, excited. "You are free of it?!" His eyes were wide and the smile that began tentatively grew until it was ferocious, radiant. "It is over?". Exuberant, he rushed to her, took her elbows and lifted her, spinning her around. "It is over!" 

Her smile in return was a forced thing, an act of costly generosity. "Not quite," she said, "We have still an army at our gates, and the wards have just fallen." 

Taking her face between his hands - the right already warming now Sauron's works were undone - he kissed her, gladly. "I will deal with that," and strode, buoyant with hope, down the great main stair. She could hear him calling orders, and the stir raised among warriors and healers alike by his voice, and she supposed she should be pleased. Instead there was nothing left to her. Nothing, but for a swell of bitter hatred for her husband. 

It was not merely the knife at her throat that made her devotion fail - they had both agreed on that, long ago, and she had counted on his strength to do it, as on a rope in the mountains. It was unflattering that he found it so easy, true, but she could not resent something she had begged him to do. No, it was this: Nenya had failed. She was left alone, helpless, powerless, in a dying land, under a mortal sun. She had now lost everything it was possible to lose, and she could not quite forgive him his joy. 

* * *

'Dollen i Riw, dannen i lass' = Winter is come, the leaf is fallen.  



	19. For the Lady!

Battle of the Golden Wood 

Chapter 19 

As Oswy lay, curled around his shame, it seemed to him that all of the created world drew in a breath, to condemn him. Leaves stilled above his head and he felt the imprint of each one as a small heaviness on his back. The voice of Khamul's ring in his mind cast off sweetness, clamoured in harsh demand. Imagination beheld the grave burst apart from the inside, its dweller come scrabbling out; the ring, wearing the revenant, coming for him against his will. The thought was vivid as elvish dreams. It drove him to his feet, terrified. He backed away from the mound, the only moving thing in a forest frozen and uncanny with suspense. "No! No, I don't want it!" 

And the held breath was exhaled. Not on condemnation, but on release. A power was unmade, and everything was altered. Time flowed back about Oswy. Green-gold light fell on his face, dappling the ground about him, and sparkling in silver above his head. The Mordor cloud had broken and the sun risen in fields of blue over the fresh spring leaves of Lorien. As one blinking out of deep sleep, Oswy stood, struggling from the crushing pressure of dark dreams. He felt as a child feels when its mother comes in at night with a candle - look, that crouching orc in his chamber is shown as a clothes chest, that glimmer of eye only a reflection of moonlight from a buckle. Released from an enchantment of terror the child sighs, relieved by light and truth. So Oswy sighed. 

He looked up, breathed in, and felt _real_, present in a way he had not felt since entering among the dreaming trees of the Golden Wood. Returning to Calandil's grave he saw only the sorrow of an immortal life brutally cut short, and felt no other call from it. He was at last his own again. 

Something had happened, of that he had no doubt. Some arcane deed had been done to reshape the world, but he had no time to wonder what. For into the new sunshine the Lord of Lorien came striding, silver as a bolt of lightning. Shrugging into armour even as he strode, calling orders, surrounded by a train of harried advisors, bright-faced soldiery, he paused but a moment when he saw Oswy, and surely he could not have missed the fresh turned earth on the grave, the soiled hands. But he said only "Come. Now we end it." 

He too, Oswy thought, looked newly awakened, and there was a difference about him that could not be placed, even as there was a difference about the forest itself. Less high, he looked suddenly, but fiercer. No less elvish, no less strange, but still, less like a legend, more like a spirit of this earth. Whether diminished, or merely changed, Oswy did not know. 

Shaking off thought, Oswy dashed to the healers' pavilion, where Leofwyn was scrambling to her feet. His mother looked even as he felt - released, puzzled about whence this new hope came, but not daring to question it. He kissed her cheek and fumbled with the buckles of his armour, until she laughed and did them tight for him. "I know not why," he said to her, "But the Lord says we may finish this now, and I believe him." 

"Some enchantment of the Enemy's has been broken, I deem," she said, and her eyes, which had in the darkness seemed dull as stones, shone now as blue as the sky above. "I feel as though I send you not to doom but to victory. Ride well, my son. Return in triumph." 

* * *

In the North, Rumil had taken charge of the combined forces of elvish knights and archers. At the fall of his brother a silent madness had come upon him and he pressed the hordes of Moria back, spending his own men recklessly, in pain, like a wounded wolf. Behind his forces Haldir came creeping like a carrion crow, picking through the bodies, gleaning weapons and metal, and those few elves who could be brought alive from the field. 

"Here! Here!" came the cry from a maiden a little in front of him. Cautiously he ran to her, bent double beneath his cloak of grey, hardly to be seen amid the boulders beslimed by black orc gore. She had found a warrior pinned beneath a horse. The horse was utterly shattered, the warrior lying in a tangle of broken bones, her lips bright red with life's blood. Sodden and dirty as the ground was her bright armour, and her helmetless hair that had once been black as a crow's wing was now a river of filth. 

"Tasariel," said Haldir, in some awe, "You are unstoppable! I climbed over the carcass of the brute that struck you - it must have been as though the Argonath fell, and yet you still live?" 

The sound she made was half way between a cough and a scream as he rolled the horse's hindquarters off her splintered legs, but he guessed it was meant as a laugh. "I will..." 

There was nowhere he could touch her without pressing on a wound, so he steeled himself to cause her agony and lifted her as speedily as he might onto a stretcher that had once been white, but now dripped, just as she did, with mud and matter. "You will..." 

He leaned closer to hear the defiant whisper. "You will make sure...I look better than this...in the song of it." 

The words reminded him of Orophin and the vow from which he had been released, and grief darkened his sight, pressing on his eyes as the vapour overhead. But then a wind came, a wind from the sea, and blew hard upon the gates of Moria. The air filled with salt and wildness. Treetops streamed like banners and, between heartbeats, Haldir's spirit was changed within him - strengthened, restored. "I will sing you fallen, all black and silver and radiant as the blossoms of Elbereth strewn across the heavens," he said, and wondered at himself. 

He carried Tasariel back within the whispering scent of Lorien's borders. As he walked his senses waited for the change - the step that would take them out of Middle earth into a memory of Valinor, the step that would tell him when he had passed the wards. It did not come. Then Haldir knew that far away, in the Black Land, the Halfling Frodo had done the deed heroes of old had found too hard. The One Ring had gone into the fire. All was unmade, the Enemy's power, and their Lady's, and now there remained but elf against orc. Of the outcome of _that_ battle he had no doubt. 

Setting the wounded knight down in the healer's tent Haldir looked upon the many bemused faces of folk who rejoiced and knew no reason for it. Laughter caught him then, like the flowers of an ancient rose - a sweetness born from thorns. "The Enemy is overthrown!" he said, "All that Mithrandir has wrought is come to fruition and Sauron is no more." 

Few had been privy to the danger the Lord and Lady had taken on themselves in letting the Ring of the Enemy shelter in Lorien. Haldir had known only because it had been his to guard for two nights. What more he knew was pieced together from rumours overheard on journeys to Imladris and Mithlond. So it was without surprise that he received the looks and wry words of incredulity. Indeed he could scarce believe it himself. Was it over? And were the elves now free from the hatred of Vala and Maia as they never had been in all the history of their race? 

Haldir's amazement was cut short. Rumil's second, Borogil, came racing into the encampment with a wide eyed look of hope. "The sun shines!" he shouted, "And the Moria-goblins shriek and cower before her face as of old. Whatever power brought them out despite her, it is gone. Let all who can stand upright and bear a weapon of any kind come - we scatter them and drive them back into their gate as the West wind scatters cloud. Come!" 

Then Haldir strapped a shield to his injured arm and took up a long white knife in his left hand. He could not draw a bow, but against common goblins this should be more than enough. A grim smile was on his face as he left Tasariel, but ere he joined the new company of the injured he paused at his brother's bedside. The flush on Orophin's face was livid as a burn, and his breaths came rapid - harsh little gasps of pain. 

Haldir bent down to kiss the hot forehead. "Orophin," he said, "The darkness is past. Come home to us. There will be peace now, I swear it. I will make you wake to peace." Then he turned and went out to fulfil that promise, to fight one more battle, to make certain that if his gentle brother returned he need never lay hand to weapon ever again. 

* * *

In the South, the elves too felt the change. A falling away, and a resurgence, as though the tide had turned. Before them orcs wailed and staggered in the new light. Companies split apart as the will that united them was withdrawn. Then wargs turned upon their riders, and Moria goblins fell on their brethren of Mordor, or allied, festering with resentment, to hack down Saruman's hated Uruks. 

The bell like note of a great horn sounded in the East - a rallying cry. Then Merethir and Erethon exchanged a glance of wonder. Back to the forest they went, once, for Erethon to re-arm his force with bundles of fresh arrows sent from the City, and for Merethir to pour over himself a bucket full of water. His white cloak had long since been lost but, with the drenching, his armour grew bright once more, and his black hair glittered with points of light. 

Erethon mounted his company on the spare horses, leaving only the injured behind. He felt alight, as though a great flame burned in his chest. "Now for justice," he said to the knight, "Now for repayment and vengeance!" 

"Justice," said Merethir, frowning, "Aye. But say not vengeance. We are no orcs. We will spare those who sue for pardon, and we will show mercy - yes even to these monsters - as befits us." 

Erethon was not abashed by this rebuke. Over nice it seemed to him - the courtesy of a vanished age, a higher people. "For Celebrian!" he shouted, and behind him both archers and cavalry took up her name as a battle cry as they swept upon their demoralized enemy. Many orcs died that day to the sight of sharp elvish beauty and the sound of the name of Celebrian, so that in ages afterwards it became a rumour of dread among them. But Erethon and Merethir drove their way through the orc host unhampered, and joined the main elvish army that gathered in the burned lands before Caras Galadhon. 

* * *

The sun had passed the noon and descended over Lothlorien. The shadow of the elven host streamed before it. A haze stood upon the river banks and spread in pearl and steam down the length of the Anduin. The light had changed from gold to silver, and the shadows were painted with distant blues. Water fretted through reeds even as the elves silently gathered, and on the further bank the orcs quarrelled among themselves, or slipped away, deserting where they might, killing each other where they could not. 

The pontoons, huge, tarred, and black, boomed as Anduin's currents slapped at them in disgust. Ill made they were. Their planks bore still the bark of the trees torn down untimely in Mirkwood, and they were held together with iron spikes, whose ragged ends had lamed many an orc, many an elvish horse. 

"Take the vile things from the water and use their wood to burn the carrion," said Celeborn to Aelinoth, "Not one living bough of Lorien will I spare for their pyre." He looked out, and saw where the enemy still held together in the middle of the field. Such captains as the Enemy had left, after the fall of the Ringwraiths, were there, and the terror of them, even now, kept the centre of their forces firm. Then Celeborn smiled, grimly, hearing the battlecry of Erethon, and he felt glad. Now he would cleanse the stain from Ennor, as he had always desired to, and present it, won, at peace, redeemed, to his Lady. She would see at last that it was possible for this world to be as perfect as the one she had given up for him. 

An early moon was in the sky. It was a good sign. "To the boats!", he cried. 

* * *

The fleet of the Galadhrim - white as snow, grey as the sea - set forth over Anduin, and Ithil's pale light mingled with the rich yellow of the descending sun. The water was as flame, and the armour and the eyes of the elvish warriors gleamed as though they were not flesh at all, but fire. Mist parted, and they burst through it, glimmering, flickering with light, surging onto the further shore. Silver limned the great banner which Oswy bore, and gathered in the heart of it, as though the stitched moon had caught the spirit of its namesake. Even upon the wave patterned spearhead radiance lay, honed as steel. 

Then Oswy knew that the shadow had passed indeed and his ordeal was over. Even if he fell now he would fall as a Man, clean, at peace with himself. He rode into song whether he lived or died. A wave of thankfulness washed out the memory of Khamul's Ring and he found himself taking up the cry of the warriors of Lorien. No longer did they call _Death! Death!_, but "For Celebrian! For the Lady!" 

Wholeheartedly, he joined his human voice to their eerie, beautiful melody. Then Lorien's army burst upon the remnant of Sauron's host like a thunderbolt from an ardent sky and scattered them utterly, driving them even to the eaves of Mirkwood, and further, into the blackness under the twisted trees. 


	20. Dol Guldur

Under the trees of Mirkwood the orcs took heart, and in the gloom beneath its writhing branches there was yet hard fighting. There Oswy saw a wood that was Sorcerous indeed, and as he fought he felt the hungry, hateful glare of many eyes on his face. The elvish army slowed, and now their bright blades sliced through cobwebs like steel hawsers, and their arrows as often brought down scuttling spiders the size of bull calves, as fleeing orcs. Even the trees ever and anon would lift a root in time to snap a horse's leg, or drop a branch upon the elvish cavalry who rode beneath their twisted shade. 

But slowly, steadily, Lorien's forces made ground. Where they passed the darkness lightened, and the red flames of eyes went out. Moonlight began to fall, in small, glistening patches, into thickets that had not seen light for a thousand years. Then many dark things scuttled away and did not return, and the army of Celeborn spread like dawn light through the desolate glades of Eryn Fuin. 

The ground had been rising for some time when Oswy saw the trees fail. He looked up and beheld slopes of ash, packed and reeking with smoke, rising to a barren, jagged hill. A fortress stood upon it, the shape of despair. A high tower rose there, up and up into a sky still smeared with vapour. Many small windows it had, their shape cramped and mean, and a red light came from them, pulsing, as though all burnt within. 

At the sight the remnants of Dol Guldur's army broke ranks and fled in disorder for the tower. 

"Erethon!" Celeborn cried, "Stop them! I want not the fortress manned against us." 

It had grown dark. Even above the smokes of the tower the sky was black, and Oswy saw little of the final battle. Only the archers of Erethon springing from the woods and running as fleet as deer on either side of the fleeing orcs. The enemy stumbled, and thinned, and fell, and for a long time the night was riven with orcish screaming, and the sound of the elves bowstrings, and their laughter. Then came silence. Oswy wrapped his arms about himself and shivered, and thought that perhaps the songs of Rohan were right in this - fey, the elves were. Dangerous and beautiful and deadly, and he did not wish ever to be their enemy. 

* * *

The darkness was no impediment to Celeborn's sight, he who had been born before the sun. He watched as Erethon's garrison hunted the last orcs beneath the curtain wall of Dol Guldur, with the arrowslits of the Enemy glaring down upon them. One orc only escaped their vigilance, hurling itself to safety and howling of the oncoming vengeance in a voice that would tell any who yet dwelt within that their day of doom had come. 

Mist was thick upon the ground, and the radiance of far off stars seemed to snare itself in the harness and banners of the heralds of the elves. They blew a challenge, waited for the notes to be acknowledged, and then called out in their clear voices. "Enemies of all free people, your Master is overthrown. Your army is slain and your fortress taken. Come forth and surrender into the hands of the Lord of Lorien, and he will offer you mercy. If you do not surrender, not one of you will be left alive." 

No answer came, but the returning heralds reported that there was yet _something_ in there with ears to hear - they had felt it. 

Unsurprised, cautiously pleased, Celeborn stationed archers at each of the gates, the salley ports, and at all but one of the secret passages Mithrandir had discovered when he entered Dol Guldur in search of Thrain. He did not expect to have to take Dol Guldur in open warfare, for orcs were no opponent who would fight to honour a slain leader, or for their own renown. Without a chief to keep them together through main terror, each one of them would now be concerned only for himself. Each one would have in mind to seize whatever of value he could find and get out - to run to safety. 

Celeborn withdrew the main force of his army beyond even the night sight of goblins, and disposed them in hiding about the one entrance he had selected to _appear_ unguarded. He waited. 

Murk thickened into fog, and the night was all whiteness against the black strokes of branches. Dew pearled on the manes of horses, and around the hoods of the elves who lay in concealment, speaking in hushed voices. 

An hour passed, or more, and suddenly there came the whine of bowstrings from the north and the west together. A clamour of orc voices; the sound of bodies falling, and silence once again. Reaching out to his sentries opened minds, Celeborn perceived that the orcs had attempted to break out of the siege in two directions, and had been driven back. Their next move would be to send scouts through each of the other exits. The archers there knew their orders well, and would let themselves be seen. 

All stilled again. The night wore on in watchfulness. Heavy fog steamed against the thirsty rocks of the scoured hill. Then, at the turning point of the night, when the darkness is deepest and the memory of sunlight furthest away, the orcs began to emerge. A company of them, united only in their desire to flee, squirmed out of the ground like a nest of ants, looked about themselves, wary, snuffing the air. The last came; a great Uruk with the keys of the fortress on an iron collar about his neck. 

"Right, you maggots," he growled, "I said there'd be a tunnel those filthy elves didn't know about! Anyone else wanna argue? Now keep together. Run!" 

The mist eddied and opened, forms moved in it, light of foot, with shining blades and voices like the song of rain. The orcs fled into the night and were cut down, one by one, before they ever glimpsed their foe. The Uruk fell last - to an axe blow - and Celeborn bent down and took from the severed neck the keys to Dol Guldur, most ancient of the dwellings of Sauron. 

  
Celeborn looked at the ring of iron that beslimed his hands with gore, and found this ending hard to believe - so often in his imagination it had been he who was vanquished, he who fell while Lorien burned around him. Such good fortune was hard to understand - hard to trust. How could the long defeat now end in victory? 

He shook himself, feeling the dark power of Dol Guldur's very stones like an icy chill over his face. Neither trust nor understanding were required, only action. There might be prisoners in the Tower's depths who could yet be saved - thralls and hostages to deliver from torment. 

"Merethir," he said, "See the encampment is made secure, and select me ten of your best close quarter fighters. Those who are resilient in mind. Who are not prone to nightmares, nor overly sensitive." 

"I understand," said his younger kinsman soberly, but his eyes were distressed, "I would we could burn the place entire. I would you did not have to go in, Lord." 

"As do I," Celeborn looked at the bulk of black masonry, the heavy crouch of it. An evil voice whispered in its walls, and its mortar was mixed with blood. Sunk and still and motionless, like a cockroach frozen in a block of ice, waiting to be warmed back to life, there lay in its stones the last and most immovable spells of Sauron. Though he would not admit it, he dreaded to go in. Of a certainty, it would bring back unwelcome memories of his imprisonment in the dwarf halls of Novrod, the helpless suffering of the most abject time in his life. "But there may be rooms within which only my strength will open, and doubtless it is in those dungeons that Sauron has locked his enemies, to torture them." 

"Any prisoners will have been killed by now," said Merethir sadly, "Surely?" 

"Can we take that chance? Would it not be a fine way to begin in this new world free of evil; by burning our imprisoned kinsfolk alive in the tower because we dared not go in." Celeborn sighed. "No, it must be done. We must be sure." 

* * *

The gate of Dol Guldur lay open, and a stench came out of it. The air within was fetid and warm, stained with fire. It steamed and smoked as it flowed into the forest, and the mists under the trees swirled strangely at its touch. 

Oswy watched the gathering of the ten knights who would accompany their Lord inside. Grim were their faces, and their knuckles were white as they gripped their weapons. Having faced the Master of this Tower - Khamul the Sorcerer, Oswy felt he had seen enough. His mind was raw with the touch of evil, and there was that about the very shape of the walls which made him sick with terror. But still, he was Celeborn's esquire, so he rose and went to them. Walking was as laborious as through quicksand as he fought his body's desire to stay away. Even so, he arrived at the group of warriors too soon for his liking. He sank to one knee, his banner still in his hand, and when Celeborn looked at him with surprise he swallowed and said, "Lord, where you go I follow. If it be your will, I will come with you.." 

Then Celeborn smiled, and in his eyes was no memory of Oswy's threats, nor his desecration of Calandil's grave, only respect. But he shook his head. "No, Edhellon. I would not ask a man with broken legs to run. I do not ask you - who have but newly emerged from one nightmare - to plunge into another. Stay here and allow me to spare you the one darkness I may." 

The small party of elves raised the hoods on their grey cloaks. At once it was hard to see where they stood - grey as mist, grey as the stones of the tower. They moved, like an eddy of breeze through the fog, shadows sliding over the walls of the fortress. They entered its open mouth and were swallowed. 

For some time Oswy stood and watched the red cavern of the door, wondering if he had been slighted by this piece of compassion. When he turned, it was to see that the elves already had camp fires burning in a cheery circle about the perimeter, and had begun to put up tents. Ardil came forward and pressed into his hand a cup of warmed wine and water. "Come," he said, "Take some rest now, for the Lord will be fell and full of fury when he returns; and then you will have to keep up with him." 

  
Guards were posted, and the night deepened. Around the fires many elves were now cooking the provisions they had brought with them - for scarce anything worth eating could be found in this forest. Oswy peeled the skin from pignuts, his gaze on the bulk of black tower rather than on his hands. 

Around midnight the fog lifted and whisped away. On the west of the encampment a fair voice lifted in song, and the stars began to come out, sharp and cold in a sky no longer smeared by fume. The smoke of the elves' fires rose straight up, and it seemed they were in a hall of misty pillars, roofed with infinity. "Ardil," said Oswy, in a feeling somewhere between ice and awe, "Should we be afraid?" 

"We?" Ardil's smile was sad, "You, young child of Men, should be full of joy. And we...should be satisfied that we leave you a cleaner world. Only the servants of Sauron need fear tonight." 

Then he took a flute from where it lay in the breast of his tunic and began to play. Oswy heard the Sea in his music - the skirl of wild winds, the high piping notes of wheeling birds, the whisper and crash onto rocks of a great ocean. Overhead a breeze passed for the first time through the tangled branches, and the noise was of cold surf on lonely beaches. It made Oswy want to weep, though he could not say why. 

So the night stole on. He slept a little, fitfully. The next day he spent in menial tasks - currying the pale horses, cleaning armour, trying not to watch Dol Guldur's gaping door with growing anxiety. But sheer tiredness wiped the following night from memory, and at dawn shapes moved once more inside the tower. The scouting party returned out of the depths of darkness, stepped out into a cool, bright sunrise. 

No wound did they have on them, but their faces were grey and sheened with a sweat of horror. One bore in his arms a swaddled thing which might, once, have been man or elf. It screamed and gibbered at the touch of light on its pallid skin. The elf who carried it turned swiftly towards the healers, but not before Oswy had seen its eyes. They had been sewn open. 

Shuddering, Oswy found a cup, filled it with the hot wine, not troubling to mix water with it, and he took it to Celeborn. The elf-lord was leaning against the wall of the fortress - his hands spread and braced as though he held up its whole weight. His head was bent until his brow almost touched the filth-blackened stones, and his eyes were shut. He spoke, quietly, urgently, to the stones, and they seemed to lift and settle, groaning reluctantly. A tremor passed through the earth, and the wall rippled for a moment - like a sheet of parchment fluttered by the wind. 

Then Celeborn gritted his teeth and straightened, wearied, his eyes narrowed in anger. "I have not the strength." 

"My lord?" Oswy handed him the wine, and he drank it back. 

"I do not have the power to bring the citadel down this way." said Celeborn. He strode over to where Merethir was ordering the disposition of guards, and Oswy went with him, reflecting that Ardil had spoken wisely. He had not yet seen his lord quite so livid or so buoyant with wrath. It crackled about him; a vivid energy. 

"My lord?" said Merethir. 

"Hearken to me," said Celeborn, "It is my will to leave no stone standing upon another in this place. I would have even the memory of it wiped away. Turn the Enemy's own siege weapons against it. Fell it to the ground!" 

"It will be done." Merethir grinned, viciously. 

So it was that, in the next days, the army of Lorien themselves gathered the pieces of the two further engines, which had been meant for their destruction, and wrought them together, and turned them upon the tower of shadows. But it would not fall. Then sappers tunnelled beneath it and set a fire in its roots, but it would not burn. A black will was there, in the very stones, that set itself against the work, and all efforts, whether of craft or of command proved in vain. 

A week passed, and still the tower stood. 

Elsewhere, however, much was achieved. The injured sent home, the dead buried. Within ten leagues of the stronghold no spider lived, and every orc redoubt and stronghold was taken. Lorien elves guarded Southern Mirkwood, and already began to speak of it with affection, as though it were their own. 

On the seventh day, seeing the fortress yet standing, Celeborn's patience at last failed. He called the army to him, and Merethir with it. "Many were the griefs in Lorien that needed tending, and I thought to leave my Lady there to achieve it," he said. "But it seems we cannot manage without her. Send for her, therefore. Ask her to come and tear down this final spoil of her victory." 

Oswy brought Celeborn's horse and he mounted swiftly, taking up a spear. "We are now secure enough here to leave you a small garrison and withdraw the army. That I will do. For it comes to my mind that Thranduil must have been as hard pressed as we during the war, and may still be in danger. We ride to his aid. Sound the horns!" 

  
So the white and silver horns of Lorien were wound upon the hill of Amon Lanc, and now their music had in it a belling like that of hounds on a trail. In dawn sunlight the blackened boughs of Mirkwood seemed already greener, remembering perhaps what the world had been like in elder days, before the coming of Sauron. But the army of Lorien formed up swiftly and passed like a mighty river, washing away the barren darkness beneath the trees, heading North. 


	21. Leaving or Staying?

* * *

"My lady, all the wounded who can be safely moved have been brought within the city walls." 

Galadriel looked up and saw the smooth, competent face of Aelinoth, her crown of black plaits haloed by a swift sunrise. It was a fair morning, and the roof and walls of the great talan had been rolled away, leaving the land's affairs to be conducted in the glory of a fresh sky. She took the tally of names from where it rested on the empty chair beside her own, and felt the healer's worry as a small dissonance in the song of the dawn. "This is a long list. Is there water enough for all in the fount of Caras Galadhon?" 

"That is my concern," said Aelinoth, her eyes downcast, "For now there is enough, but the spring is falling and it will ere long run dry. Unless we can take water from the rivers soon, I know not how we will continue to live." 

Nimrodel and Silverlode sweltered still under their load of poison, so she had read only an hour ago, but on Galadriel's left, Osdan - the elf charged with the clearance of Anduin - stiffened almost unnoticeably. His mind was open, and she could feel his eagerness to speak, an underlying sense of satisfaction, bordering on smugness. She smiled and said "I believe both bridges and bodies have now been removed from the Great River, and it is fit to use." Turning, she looked at the slightly crestfallen engineer with mild enquiry. "Is that not so?" 

"Yes," he said, impressed, "I had just come to report it." 

"Let it be done so, then. Are you answered?" 

"Very well, Lady." Aelinoth departed with an air of new hope, and to soothe his ruffled feathers Galadriel praised Osdan in words that sent him forth glowing. 

When he had gone there was a pause in which, but for guards, she was alone with the day. She smoothed a wrinkle in her skirt and thought of how easy it had been - ringless or no - to overawe her people with her knowledge. Doubtless Osdan had gone forth believing that she still knew every last detail of what happened in her realm. Such tricks she had long engaged in, knowing that her illusion of omniscience comforted her folk and made outsiders think twice about challenging her. In private Celeborn laughed at it, and called it vanity. In public, out of his kindness, he indulged her. But he did not understand. He had not grown to manhood in a huge family of warring cousins or learned, early in life, the value of appearing invulnerable. 

She spread her hands on her knees and looked down. Nenya sparkled on her finger like a spidersweb bedewed in sunlight, its visibility a jarring reminder that it was now powerless. 

With it, the seeming infinity of her knowledge had not been so far from the truth. But what was she without it? She had been a ringbearer so long. So long accustomed to its unseen weight, to the sense of largeness, to the way it opened her like one of the living flowers of the ocean, and washed the scents of all the world into her waiting mind. The first thing she had done, after her husband departed leaving her bereft, had been to find it and put it back on. Her hand had felt so empty without it, and her heart cold. But just as Celeborn had no sympathy to offer her, so Nenya failed of comfort at last, broken and drained as she herself. 

The trees sighed about her, a soft susurration like the lap of a gentle sea against a white shore, where pearls lay scattered among the sand. Last night, in dreams, the Valar's pardon had been offered to her a second time. Wearied to the point where she could be humble, torn between joy and heartbreak, she had at last accepted it. And now all her thoughts were of the ocean. A tide of longing for Valinor swept from beneath her the foundation which held her in these mortal lands, washed into the great sea all ties of love and longing; calling, calling, in a voice she had spent centuries denying, but could resist no more. 

On her left hand Nenya's beautiful corpse shone like light on the waves. But on her right there gleamed a ring of gold - as plain and unmarked as the One itself. Her wedding ring. For many years she had felt no need to contemplate it. It just _was_. But now - recalling that flash of bitter resentment - she wondered if this ring too would prove as perilous to her as the Enemy's. For this ring had not lost its power - it lay on her hand as heavy as a chain, holding her back from healing, imprisoning her in this darkened, meaningless land. She had done now what she came from Valinor to do, for Morgoth was defeated, and Sauron overthrown. Her pride, abased though it was, was satisfied, and she could now go home, but for this ring, but for Celeborn's love. 

_All you begin in hope will end in ruin,_ she thought. Such had been the Doom of Mandos. Her fea, and that of her husband, had been joined eternally not by any Vala, but by Iluvatar Himself, and throughout the years she had clung to the knowledge that it could not be undone, even by Namo himself. But perhaps the 'ruin' of their marriage might come not through dissolution, nor separation, but by enduring forever in hatred, as a torment to one another until the end of the world. 

She was tempted to say 'the Valar could not be so cruel'. But she had seen the madness in the eyes of the sons of Feanor, and she knew that they could. 

At the foot of the tree the trumpets sounded. She stirred, clasped her hands together, covering both rings, and raised her head to watch as there bounded onto the booming deck a messenger from the host of Lorien. "Lady," he said, throwing himself to one knee, sodden cloak leaving a curling stroke of black orc blood on the pale wooden floor. "The enemy is utterly routed, and Dol Guldur is ours. The Lord asks that you come and tear it down, so that your victory may be complete." 

"He is not returned himself?" Galadriel could, had she so wished, have stretched out and brushed her husband's mind - distance was no matter to those linked by love. But the last time she had done so he had been closed to her, armoured as if her touch had been the Eye of Sauron. That too had hurt. Suppose he remained thus? Unwilling to find it so, she did not try. 

"No, Lady," the messenger grinned, and she felt rebuked by the happiness of everyone around her. It was irrational, having taken care that no one would see her pain, to feel slighted by their disregard of it, but when had such emotions ever answered to reason? 

"We took the fortress some eleven days ago, and cleared all danger from the forest about it - Lord Merethir would not let me depart until he was sure it was safe for you. But my Lord Celeborn is gone himself with all haste to Thranduil's aid, taking the greater part of the army with him, not knowing what they might find. Dol Guldur stands empty and resists every weapon we can throw at it. Will you not come?" 

There was a chance, Galadriel thought, that she could go, bring down the fortress, and return, ere ever Celeborn had done with Thranduil's war. Perhaps she could put off the moment of facing him, just a little longer. Her own uncertainties should not come between herself and her duty. She stood. "Let an escort be prepared for me," she said, and smiled a costly smile - so that all would see how pleased she was at their triumph. "I will assemble some of the healers, lest Thranduil's folk have need of them. We will depart within the hour." 

She took care that no one on Middle earth would ever know that - though it would make her choices easier - still what she feared most was to look upon her husband and find at the last there was nothing left between them but detestation. 

* * *

Haldir sat among the healers and rolled up bandages. Boiled and dried they were now ready for use once more, though there seemed some hope that not all would be needed. The human child, Gytha, helped him, so intent on being useful that he had not the heart to tell her he could have done the work twice as well, and in half the time, alone. She had picked up a great deal of Sindarin and chatted all the while in a mix of Grey-elvish and Rohirric that fell barbarously on his ear. He learned much about the frolics and follies of some of Lorien's youngest maidens as he watched her small hands wind the linen in loose, cumbrous spirals - which he knew someone would take away with effusive thanks and do again correctly. She was more serious than many a five-hundred year old elf, but in a body that did not yet obey her commands. A strange but delightful creature. There was no wonder the Healers had taken her under their wing as one of their own. 

From the corner of his eye Haldir noticed Leofwyn, watching them. Her expression was clouded, and every time Gytha returned some Sindarin phrase, or gestured in a way she had learned from the ladies, Leofwyn's concern seemed to deepen. He understood it well enough, for there had been other Men slain on the borders of Lorien through the years - orphans brought in and raised by the elves, and though it had been better than leaving them to die, the results had rarely been happy. Like a kitten raised among a litter of pups, the children had not, by nature, fitted in to one kind, nor by upbringing into the other. Lavished with love and affection, still they grew out of shape, and tragedy overtook them, as it had Turin, Thingol's famous fosterling. 

"I must see if they will let me visit my brother," he said. He put the bandages into a basket and handed it to her, turning her around and pushing her towards her own folk. "Go take these to your father." 

* * *

When he did not improve, Orophin had been moved to a curtained pavilion so that - Haldir thought sourly - his death should not disturb the other patients. He and Rumil had been urged to make themselves useful elsewhere, but it did not stop them from visiting every time the wind changed, or the trees spoke, or a woodpecker knocked...or their hearts failed them in terror that he might have woken in their absence and died alone, thinking himself abandoned. 

Now he stopped outside the small tent and watched Rumil come, picking his way through the injured like a walking flame - so bright was his hair in the dawn sunlight, and the polished hilts of the knives which lay at his shoulder. Rumil was arrayed for war, and, though the Lady had withdrawn the army from Moria, saying there would be no further attacks, still Haldir understood. It would be a while before anyone felt secure enough to go unarmed. 

"Any news?" Rumil looked at his older brother with entreaty, but Haldir had no reassurance to give him. He sought for something to say, but was spared from filling his mouth with the ash of platitudes as the healer, Rian, approached. "How is he?" 

She lifted the tent flap and put the bowl and soaked cloth she carried inside on the long grass. When she finally looked at them both her eyes were hollow, faintly guilty. "I grieve to say this, but unless the fever breaks soon either he will die, or when he does awaken you will not know him, nor he you." 

"What do you mean?" Haldir was aghast at this further anguish on top of all others. 

Rian shook her head, "To struggle this long...it can take away some part of the fea - memories, or strength, even wit. I do not council you to lose hope just yet, but he _must_ wake soon, or it will be too late." 

Haldir breathed in sharply. There seemed to be a great pit in the centre of his chest - an endless darkness like the abyss of Khazad-Dum. His breath could not fill it, and it had such a weight his legs could hardly bear it up. Rumil choked, and then - eyes widening - covered the sound with a hand over his mouth as he bowed awkwardly to someone behind Haldir. Turning, Haldir saw that the Lady Galadriel stood at his shoulder, as pale in face as she was in raiment. 

"Rumil," she said, "I would not normally take you from those you love in this dire pass, but these are not normal times, and the list of unscathed warriors left in Lorien is a short one. You will head my escort to Dol Guldur, and witness for Orophin's sake our final victory over our age long enemy." 

Rumil stepped back, almost staggered, but he lifted his chin and looked at her. She held his gaze, and after a long time he straightened, both their faces saddened by the same small smile. "Yes, Lady," he said, "For Orophin, and for you." 

Turning to Haldir he said, "Make sure he's still here when I get back, or we will have words." Then, bowing once more, he went without a backward look, and only his brother saw the effort it cost him in his braced and painful stride. 

"So much loss..." said the Lady softly, and laid her hand on Haldir's shoulder. A strength flowed through the touch, so that although in every other part of him he was as brittle as ice, only there did he feel himself alive. Daringly, he looked up into her eyes - so tall she was! It was as though he looked into the clear waters of her mirror, and saw there the pain of all Lorien. She carried his grief, with a thousand - a hundred thousand - other hurts. And though she offered no solace there was some balm in the knowledge that she too understood what it was to be in agony when all around were turning their thoughts to bliss. 

"You are great and wise, my Lady," he said, moved, "Can you not do something for him? Can _you_ not heal him?" 

What flashed through her eyes then looked less like regret than guilt. It surprised and dismayed him, and he chided himself for awakening some ancient regret which should have been left buried, for surely she had done nothing for many ages of the world for which she should be ashamed. Looking aside, she smiled softly, and her voice was gentle and full of sadness. "Ah, Haldir, my touch will bring your brother no weal. For he lacks not strength, only a reason to stay. Go call him, and see if your love can be the hook which hauls him back to these shores. If you cannot do it, I deem no one can." 

At that she moved away. Haldir stood a moment, watching her speak to Leofwyn - from the woman's grateful smile he guessed she had been asked to go to Mirkwood with the Lady's party, and would as a result the sooner be reunited with her son. Then he drew together enough courage to move, lifted the flap of Orophin's small tent and ducked inside. 

It was dim and still within. Orophin was tangled in linen sheets, but lay utterly still. To Haldir's eyes, able to tell a sparrow from a finch at a mile's distance, the skull glimmered visible beneath the stretched, famished face. Always it was eerie in here, hearing the sick man struggle with enemies of his own mind's making - tossing and burning, crying out, his wide eyes seeing into some other, fouler world. Though he loved his brother, Haldir had come to dread the hours spent with those nightmares - the ache of hearing fears and agonies he could not assuage. Sitting crosslegged in the dim dark, bathing the furious fire from Orophin's livid, glowing skin, Haldir had already begged - as Lady Galadriel said - for him to return. He had pleaded, holding and rocking his youngest brother as he had when the boy was first born, the cheek that lay against his collarbone painfully hot. But Orophin heard nothing, only writhed in his grip and called out nonsense, or screamed, his voice raw and parched. 

All was silent now. 

The quietening of Orophin's pain at first pleased Haldir. He breathed in deep, but the sigh of relief became a sob as he came further in, knelt to take the open hand in his own, and found it was cold. 

It was cold. 

Haldir's heart stopped. He laboured to inhale but found he had forgotten how as he dropped the hand and smoothed back sweat-damp tangles of yellow hair from Orophin's brow. Oh Eru! That too was cold, and the face was white, damp and white and chill as clouds. Moving, he knew not how - so separate from his body had his mind become - he found himself clutching the limp, thin form in his arms, Orophin's head on his knee, his own head bent over and a darkness that was his hair spilling over both of them, cutting out the light. "Muindor, gwanur...mellon nin," he said softly, as tears welled and fell unnoticed from his eyes, splashing on the bruised, sunken face of his brother. "Orophin, oh Orophin, please!" 

So his worst thoughts had proved true. As he sat, occupying his hands with useless work, his beloved brother had died alone. Closing his eyes he pulled the frail body closer and keened, his voice rising in a wordless litany of grief like the groan of the earth itself under Sauron's torment. 

A hand touched his cheek, wiping away his tears. It was a large, bow-string calloused, cold hand that trembled with effort. Haldir choked on his lament, eyes flying open, and saw Orophin watching him with weary concern. "I dreamed of rain," Orophin whispered, and smiled. 

Haldir set him down swiftly, scrambled away, and collided with Rian - who had come running when she heard his outcry. Turning, he grasped at the maiden's arm as if at sanity. "He is... He was..." _Dead. He was dead._ "I came in and he was..." 

She pushed him aside and knelt to help the sick man lie more comfortably on the pallet. Touching his forehead and his throat she sang a little, a sound of running water, cool and clean. Then she looked back at Haldir with a gaze full of both sympathy and barely restrained laughter. "Thou poor fool! He was but cold because his fever had broken, and still because - at last - he slept a healing sleep. All is well now." She smiled brightly, "All is very well. Now stay here while I bring a draught he must drink, and clean sheets, and take down this pavilion that he might see the sky..." All business, her own happiness transmuted into bustle, Rian left on the first of her many errands and Haldir met his brother's tired eyes with a shamefaced look, and a heart that was afraid to sing. 

"Did I scare you?" said Orophin. 

And Haldir thought of years gone by when an elf-child would leap on him in ambush, would wake him in the mornings with Balrog-roaring, or fill his moments of quiet with the unwelcome howls of ferocious, unconvincing wargs. Past days of sunlight dappled on a willow-wand of a boy, who ran after him with worship and challenge. _Did I scare you?_

"No," he said as he always had, and wept again, in painful joy. "Not for a moment." 


	22. An End Comes

* * *

As Oswy rode he looked about himself. Even in daylight the woods of Eryn Fuin were clad in dim, grey twilight, roots and boughs in twisted war with one another. The air was still and stale. Webs and creepers hung from the boughs - ivy dusty as the spider-threads. But about the elves of Lorien there fell a green shadow, and it seemed they dragged the dawn behind them. Where they had passed lances of sunlight burst through the canopy and heavy purple butterflies wheeled among the trees. Some memory of colour returned to lichen and tree-trunks. Shed leaves, over which their hooves thundered, newly gleamed with the brown of good soil. 

They were two day's ride from Dol Guldur when the first orc burst from cover before the startled noses of the leading horses. Running full pelt, looking behind itself as it tore the armour from its back in order to go faster, the snaga fled from some unseen peril straight into the elvish host. Its look of utter surprise was beyond price, and Oswy found himself grinning fiercely. Even so some of his people had looked when first they beheld Saruman's army coming upon them. _See,_ he thought, _How your deeds return to you, foul one!_

The snaga hesitated, panting, leaning on its knuckles - its long arms trailed on the ground - aware of the scores of arrows turned its way. The forest seemed to draw its breath as the elves paused, reluctant to slay so pathetic a thing. It opened its mouth, tongue lolling out, eyes wide with terror. And then the bushes were flattened, bracken torn up, as a squad of Uruks trampled their way out of the undergrowth. They too were looking behind rather than before them, but their presence gave the snaga either courage or a more overriding fear. It raised its rusty, notched scimitar and leapt for Merethir's horse. 

It died at once, pierced by three shafts, and the Uruks fell before Celeborn and his knights like wheat before the scythe. Then the Lord of Lorien raised his hand and signalled for quiet. It fell, absolute. Even the elven steeds stood motionless, neither snorting nor swishing their tails. Oswy's breathing became a loud matter, though he tried to muffle it behind his mailed glove. 

No sound of bird broke Mirkwood's sullen silence. But distantly, as yet on the edge of hearing, though growing louder every second, there came a clamour. Oswy heard the ring of mail and sword, the harsh yelling of orcs and hissing of the huge spiders; elven battlecries, and - stirring something he had almost forgotten in him - the shouts of mortal Men. In return a fervour went through the host of Lorien, the knights sitting straighter, Erethon's archers lifting their heads, fire in their grey eyes. Then Celeborn laughed aloud. "Hear!" he said, "It is the army of Thranduil. He drives them before him, straight into us. Like a speck of dust between our two cymbals, we will clash on them and the wood will resound with the noise!" 

"For Lorien! For the Lady" cried the host about him. But Celeborn said "No, not for Lorien alone, nor even for all Elvendom. For Middle-earth and the dawn of a new age." 

Thus it was that when the forces of Lorien came racing like an ocean wave through the dark shadows of the wood of night, and burst upon the last orc host, every voice was raised in praise of sunrise and clean day. There the fighting was close and deadly. Trapped between two elvish armies the orcs were filled with rage and terror. Like a cornered boar, they fought, possessed with fell strength and killing madness. Unstoppable unless they be hacked in pieces. Many a merry elf died in that last of the battles of the Golden Wood. Still, the sun had barely passed the noontide when the glamhoth lay slaughtered, and the warriors of Lothlorien and Eryn Fuin found themselves facing one another over a pile of the slain. 

It was a strange army, Oswy thought, that of Thranduil. Other than himself, Lorien's folk were all elves, moon-bright, sharp as lances, with the light of stars in their eyes. But Mirkwood's army had great, hulking Men - some clad only in paint - and bears who walked like Men, with human cunning in their faces. Men, little different from the Rohirrim, there were also, armoured like woodsmen in heavy leather, billhooks and adzes and a motley of other gleaned weapons in their hard hands. 

Oswy found it unsettling to be among Men again. For a moment he saw them as an elf might - noisy, clumsy, but full of swift impatient life and bearing their own strong beauty. A tug of homesickness came over him briefly, all the sharper because he had pledged himself to an elven Lord. 

  
Taking Merethir with him, and Ardil with the mallorn banner of Lorien, and Oswy with Thingol's device, Celeborn rode into the space between the two forces and waited. Ere long, there came from the host of Mirkwood an Elven King with his herald and his banner-bearers. He was arrayed for battle in armour of an ancient make, and his cloak was green, though much bespattered with blood. Helmless he was, his gleaming, golden hair crowned with mayblossom and catkins. A necklace of emeralds shone verdant about his throat, and his scabbard was wrought with many gems, carved in the shape of fresh green leaves. Glad and fair was his face - as kindly, and yet as fierce at need, as the sun of high summer. Thranduil, King of the Elves of Northern Mirkwood. Mighty among the Firstborn in these later days. 

There seemed a resemblance in the looks of the two elvish rulers, as though at several generations remove they might share a common forefather. But not as friends did they ride slowly together, rather with the wary faces of those who have once been at odds, and wonder if trust is possible again. Wondering at it, Oswy was aware of the unease of the elves of Lorien behind him, and before him he saw the forces of Eryn Fuin stiffen slightly, their expressions closed. 

Then Thranduil dismounted. Swiftly, Celeborn followed suit, his axe left in its mount on his saddle. "Cousin," he said, quietly. 

Thranduil inclined his head, his lips turning up slightly, "Kinsman." 

At that they embraced, gold against silver, as though the sun shone upon snow, and what began as a formal gesture became, half way through, something of a grudging hug. 

Both armies relaxed at once, and long sundered friends on either side signalled to one another, waving. 

"A star shines on our meeting," said Thranduil, stepping back, "You came to rescue me?" 

"To aid, certainly," Celeborn smiled, "We have been hard pressed, and I wished not to waste time sending messengers when I might go myself. Better to come where I am not needed than arrive too late where I am." 

Thranduil made as if to speak, but at the last, with a look of great self-restraint, he closed his mouth and motioned to his army. There came out from its ranks a mighty Man, thrawn and tall. His hair and beard were white with age, but no sign of frailty lay in the bare shoulders under his tunic of simple wool. With him came a second man, in raiment of boiled leather, incised with small birds. Blond as a Rohirrim, he was, and he looked on Oswy with surprise and concern. "This is Grimbeorn the Old, Lord of the Beornings. And Ulf of the Greenwood. My friends and allies, this is Celeborn, Lord of the golden land of Lothlorien." 

Oswy was at first indignant, and then amused at his own change of heart, when he saw the looks of suspicion which went through the faces of the Woodmen at this introduction. They seemed to dwell happily enough beside the elves of Mirkwood - who, to Oswy's eye, looked little different from the Galadhrim - but they quailed at the name of the Golden Wood. Many were the Men in Thranduil's ranks who looked anew at Celeborn with fear, and stepped back. 

Ulf was not one. He grinned - a gape of broken teeth behind his sandy beard. But there seemed little warm about the smile. It was a challenge, rather. "There is one among your company who is no elf, Lord of Lorien," he said, a hint of accusation in his rasping tenor voice, "Though he is clad and shod and mounted as one. How comes he here? I understood the borders of your land were closed to those not of your kind." 

"I turn no one away who is in need," said Celeborn, mildly, "Though it is true we have not had open dealings with the world outside for many years. That may now change, as we see fit." He beckoned Oswy forward, and - understanding, suddenly, that Ulf feared him ensorcelled, kept in Lorien against his will - he came in his own time, looked Ulf in the eye proudly. "This is Oswy Edhellon, Lord of the Oshelmingas of Rohan, who offered his service to me in this time of war. He is held by no spell stronger than his word, and he may depart at any time with my blessing." 

"Lord Ulf?" Oswy glared unkindly upon the Man, and endured a raking gaze which searched him for signs of enchantment, dropped, puzzled, when none were to be found. 

"Ah," said Ulf, looking doubtful, "Well, perhaps not all tales are true. But if not, you will not mind me speaking at more length with the boy, in company of other Men?" 

"This is neither time nor place for your folly, Man of Greenwood," said Celeborn, with a narrowing of the eyes that made those around him breathe softer. "I return now to Amon Lanc. If you wish to have further speech with Lord Oswy you must come there." 

He turned to Thranduil - who had been watching this exchange with a bland, polite expression, and a lurking hint of humour in his bright eyes. "Dol Guldur is taken, though for now it still stands. Will you not accompany us and watch it fall?" 

"For many hundred years I have yearned for such a sight," said Thranduil, suddenly fierce, "And grievous are the wounds its spawn inflicted upon my realm in these past days. Gladly will I go with you to witness its ruin." He smiled - a brief flash, like light from the facet of a gem - "Even if it means encountering your Lady wife once more." 

"Thranduil," said Celeborn, "We have only just begun speaking again. Let this not be the shortest truce in Eldarin memory." 

* * *

Many orders were given, and the greater part of Thranduil's force departed Northwards. Then Grimbeorn bid the elves farewell. "I have no care for stones," he said, "Be they in towers or heaps. But the bees are humming in the meadows of my folk, and there is much to put right. A good fight, my Lords, but may it be the last in my lifetime!" Then he put his axe over his shoulder and strode away Westwards, towards the mountains. His folk, man and beast alike, went with him, a shuffle of bent backs and silent strength, he among them - in the shadow - seeming neither Man nor Bear, but both at once, grizzled and formidable. 

Ulf, however, spurred his mount until he was riding beside Oswy. A company of his followers fell in behind him and mingled with the elves of Lorien, apparently at ease, though their backs were very tense. "Speak freely to me," said Ulf softly, "Are you truly here by your own will? You are but a child, and..." 

"You ask me to speak freely?" Oswy would hear no more. He doubted that Ulf had faced down a Nazgul, or come unscathed through the dread sorcery of one of the Enemy's rings, or saved the life of a king. He was no child! "Then I will speak. Am I ensorcelled? Only as any man of good heart might be who sees something wondrous, and rare, and doomed. Look at them, Ulf, and tell me you do not feel it too! Ill fortune, I thought it, to be trapped between orcs and the Golden Wood, but now I am glad, for I have seen a beauty few men can look on and then live without." He shook his head, as a horse shakes off taunting flies, and despaired of trying to explain. "If you have seen them, and you still do not understand, then you never will. But I take it ill of you to doubt my Lord's word, and I will prove his truth on your body with my sword - if you carry on." 

At that Ulf laughed, unabashed. He flung up a hand "Enough! I do not call him a liar. My only desire was to set you free - if you were captive - and to bring you back among your own kind. But I am glad the endeavour is not needed." 

Ulf's black cob nickered gently as the host turned back towards Dol Guldur, and its rider looked approvingly on the forest about him. Already it seemed less diseased, even to Oswy's plains-trained eye. He could imagine the improvement was all the more obvious to the woodsman. And only then, looking at the sudden, astonishing change from coal to chestnut in the boles of the trees, seeing a glimmer of new buds where there had swung the sucked-dry, skeletal prey of spiders, did Oswy realize how much he had begun to take for granted the magic of the elves. He had begun to see it with the eyes of the Galadhrim, as nothing more than the way the world was. Yet had he looked upon it as one of his countrymen might, would he not too have been afraid? 

"I do understand," said Ulf, quietly, "I am from Rohan myself - from the Westfold. My folk have long had trading links with the Woodmen, and one night - bringing good beef of the Mark to exchange for timber - I heard the elves of Mirkwood singing in the distance. Then I could not go home. I could not bear to think I would never hear it again." He smiled wryly, "So I settled among the woodmen, and have a wife here - the daughter of the headman - and two sons, thankfully too young to fight. I dwell among my own people, but I can go and see Thranduil's folk whenever I will, and I count myself the luckiest man in Middle earth." 

"Then why...?" 

"Because the songs of Rohan have no evil to speak of Mirkwood. _Lorien_ is the Land of Peril - the Wood of the Witch-Queen, where the sorceress sits weaving her webs of spells. Who knows what the elves of that land are like. Terrible, I deem!" 

Only a few short months ago, Oswy knew he would have nodded in sage agreement to this. Somehow that made it all the worse. "The Lady Galadriel is my Lord's wife," he said coldly, "And I will not have her spoken of thus. Ere long, if you come with us to Dol Guldur, you will see her with your own eyes. You will know then that she is a no Sorceress, but a Lady, high and brave and fair as the sunrise." 

"If so, then I will hold myself rebuked," said Ulf smiling, "And look! I knew not that Lorien had a Lord - _he_ is not in the songs. I am as willing to be proved wrong about your Lady. I own I _am_ curious to see her. But now remember that I spoke out of ignorance, and let us be friends, for you are doughty and loyal, and I wish you well." 

* * *

Afternoon sun shone slanting into the clearing and onto the bleak hill of Amon Lanc. Then many cankers in the treetops were touched with honey coloured light and withered or broke away, leaving smooth bark that glowed with subtle browns, or glossy silken grey. It was in this time of golden sun that the sound of Lady Galadriel's party came first to the tents of the encampment. Newly returned himself, Oswy stood beside the pavilion in which Thranduil and Celeborn sat, speaking softly as they exchanged their tales of war. Ulf sat beside him, and they watched together as the riding of Lorien's maidens came into view. 

White was Galadriel's palfrey and golden were the bells upon its bridle, and they rang soft and sweet. Her hair was a crown upon her head, deeply gold as the sunshine, and her mantle was as cloud, edged with small flowers of elanor. Upon her pale brow and upon the ladies who followed her a light seemed to dwell, otherworldly, and a glister of pearl drifted about the hems of their dresses, their horse's polished hooves. 

"Ahh..." said Ulf, and smiled. But Oswy's gaze did not linger on the Lady, it was drawn to the one woman in that riding. Leofwyn sat among the maidens of the Galadhrim, and looked well there. Proud and tall, warlike and not at all out of place, she seemed. Like a shield maiden in tales of old, archaic and splendid. Some of the Lady's power, perhaps, spilled over Leofwyn and showed not illusion, but the truth of her inner strength. 

Then Galadriel dismounted, giving her reins to Rumil of Lorien, and the elven Lords rose and went to her. Oswy followed, keeping to his Lord's left - though he much desired to run to Leofwyn rather and find out from her how his people fared. There would be time for that later. 

"Thranduil Oropherion," Galadriel smiled upon the King of Northern Mirkwood with a smile of great charm, "I am glad to meet once more my husband's kinsman. Too long has the silence lain between us." 

She turned almost reluctantly to Celeborn, looked in his face as though she hoped to see the answer to many unspoken questions there. But if she found answers, she said nothing. At her gravity and her questing gaze his open look of welcome faltered a little, and he frowned. "I bid Thranduil be present as he has suffered most and warred longest with this place, and has a right to watch it fall." 

"You have great faith in my abilities, my Lord," said Galadriel, and if her voice was teasing, her eyes were full of doubts and rebuke, "Though you know them to be diminished. I had not thought to have an audience for this." 

"I am no 'audience'," Thranduil bridled, "Have I not been at war with Dol Guldur five, nay five hundred times longer than you have, and with no power but the strength of my arm..." 

"Peace," said Celeborn, and drew a hand through his hair in seeming weariness. "My Lady, you were the most powerful of all elves in Middle Earth long ere the Ring came to you, you were the strongest while you bore it, and you are _still_ the strongest. I have no doubt you will bring down these walls as easily as I might crumble a handful of dried leaves." He sighed. "And Cousin, try not to look for insult where there was none intended. Just for this short time may we tear the works of the enemy and not each other?" 

At that the Lady laughed quietly. Then, walking a little apart she turned her face to the tower. She was still a moment, facing it, glimmering in its gloom like a slender lily at the foot of a mountain. Then she raised her arms, holding the sunshine in her open palms, and she began to sing. Dark and sweet was her voice as pouring honey, and as honey the words seemed to fall from her mouth - heavy, golden, with a power almost visible, curling about the base of the black stones of Dol Guldur; seeping down into its hidden dungeons, rising upon its walls as the deep yellow light which comes before a storm. 

A wind sprang up, and the treetops tossed, dust showering from the withered leaves. A dark autumn came with a skirl of soot and fume upon cold air. Dead leaves fell and for the first time in many a century the sky was visible from beneath the trees. A bare winter descended upon the forest. Branches whipped against the sky and shed dirt like a rain of shadow. Galadriel sang on, and her voice strengthened - clear and sweet and dreadful as the notes of glass. It rang in Oswy's head and through his blood, and all his bones were shaken as water. He fell to his knees and clasped his hands over his ears just as the sound - a high, pure, yearning, unendurable sound - was answered. 

Dol Guldur spoke. Its stones groaned. Its voice cried out from the walls - a hollow roaring, deeper than the foundations of the earth. And the earth replied. At first only a tremor Oswy could hardly distinguish from his own, the ground began ere long to ripple, and then to buck like an unbroken colt. Still Galadriel sang, the light upon her like the radiance of another world. Stronger yet streamed the melody of power from her lips. 

Upon the battlements of the Dark Tower Merethir's company had trained its own devices, hurling stones and treetrunks against them. There were there some small scars, some few splintered stones, the result of all his fury. But now, beneath the song of the Lady of Lorien, those scars opened. Splinters became fissures, cracks became chasms, running like lightning from the clawlike turrets to the squat, immovable base, and down, further. Caves and corridors beneath the earth began to collapse. The tower thrashed like a tree in a tempest, and the dead power that kept one stone upon the next was scoured away. Masonry began to fall; arrhythmic, and the harsh, booming roar of the song of Dol Guldur strove with the terrible sweetness of Galadriel's. 

Then the earth rose and opened. Oswy cried out in terror as the world tilted and a pit gaped beneath the foot of the tower. Cold was the smell of that abyss, dank and chill as a world of buried things - air sighed from it and stroked his shuddering hands with a clammy mist. "Bema! Oh Bema!" he cried, scarcely knowing what he said, aware in some small, resentful corner of his soul that he was not the only Man on his knees. There was scarcely one standing. But the elves were upright and their faces were turned to the tower, and in their eyes was something utterly strange. Something he neither knew nor wanted to understand; fey and furious and full of joy. 

A moment of balance. Oswy felt as though a nail of ice were being slowly drawn through his eye; he could scarce breathe or think for the aweful, dreadful beauty of Galadriel's song. A vein burst in his nose and blood flowed and spattered on the silver-grey steel of his mail. He tossed his head, trying to make the sound go away, and at that moment the first wall slid like a slope of scree down into the pit. The air was filled with choking dust, and small falling stones, and - from some vault now burst apart - a rain of ill made pewter coins bearing the device of the lidless Eye. 

Darkness ate itself. Now that the first wall had fallen the others followed swiftly - the ground gaping for them, closing in upon them, over them, crushing and burying them. There was an edge of triumph to the Lady's voice now - vindicated, perhaps even relieved. Oswy looked up to see Thranduil and Celeborn standing very straight among the tempest of falling boulders, with their eyes shining. 

At last, after a time that seemed very long to Oswy, there was nothing more of Dol Guldur to fall. The shaking earth had consumed it all, and now it stilled. The armies of Lorien and Eryn Fuin stood upon a bare round hill, and the westering sun shone unobscured upon a scatter of loose stones and a scar of new-turned soil. 

He shook himself, hardly able to believe what had happened. Awed and terrified almost out of his senses. Had not a fortress stood there only this morning, that now was completely unmade? He struggled to his feet and stood, swaying, leaning on Thingol's banner as a prop, and oddly, irreverently, the thought came to him that he should be thankful that he had made no wager with Ulf on the matter of the Lady's Sorcery. 

* * *

As the tower fell, Celeborn fought the urge to laugh in sheer delight - the power and the music of Galadriel curled about him like a storm, and he felt like a mariner, in a small boat, running before the tempest. This was his lady - unaccompanied, unmuffled, unchanged by the cold white voice of arcane craft in the form of a worthless ring. She needed it not. She never had. And surely now she would see it. 

The ground shook and he rode it, exalting. Other men sought out danger on the untamed ocean, threw themselves at foes too great for them in battle, sought out the thrills of speed and danger and death, but he, he had wed the elemental force, and brought the storm home to live with him. Where other men saw something to fear, he saw only her splendour, and Oh, how he loved her for it! 

  
Dol Guldur was fallen, and the place where it had stood smoothed over. Galadriel muffled a cough behind her hand and sighed, her proud head drooping a little. Then she raised her arms once more and began to sing of springtime, as though she would clothe the bare hill with green grass. Celeborn's heart leapt at the thought that she would turn her mind to new growth; to a future here in Middle-earth. Surely this was victory, and her strength had returned? Might not the sea-longing itself have abated in her, now that Nenya - the cause of that ailment - was no longer? Might not things now return to how they had been, without it? He breathed in a clean air, prepared himself to welcome happiness. 

But Thranduil stepped forward, and caught Galadriel's sleeve, his face dark. "No," he said, "Of destruction you may sing - for destruction you have brought on many a realm. But you will not sing of beginnings or times to come. I will not have your curse rest upon my wood. Eryn Lasgalen will not come to ruin because of you." 

At that, Celeborn's heartbeat faltered, and he looked to her, awaiting her anger - praying for her anger. The Galadriel he knew would let no one speak to her thus, king or no. But instead of the biting rage he hoped for - the stare that would have intimidated a Balrog, the flash of a haughty and imperious spirit - she lowered her hands, and looked in Thranduil's face with eyes full of resignation, and defeat. She said nothing, but turned and walked away. 

Then Celeborn felt as Dol Guldur must have felt when the pit opened up beneath it. The foundations of his world were broken and cast into darkness, all the more bitter because he _knew_ that he had built them on false hope, deluding himself. In pain, he took hold of Thranduil and spun him about. "There is no curse!" he cried; not sure to whom he spoke - his kinsman, or his wife's retreating back - "All things come to ruin! Every ancient oak in the forest must fall in its time - it is the way of this world." 

Did he speak to Thranduil or to himself? In desperation? In folly? Or in truth? "You pick up the seeds, you take them somewhere else, you plant anew. It grows again, young and fresh. That is the way of things in Ennor! It is the way things are. It is no curse!" 

But Thranduil seemed unmoved. He gave a small, bitter laugh, though his gaze was not without pity. "You have to think that, cousin. You married her. I did not, and I do not have to take that chance." 


	23. Preparing for the Future

* * *

"The Lady is weary and would sleep," said Thilevril, standing before the gauze drape of Galadriel's pavilion like Mablung before the treasury of Doriath. "She asks that you leave her in peace." 

There had been many orders to give, many small, vital details of governance to attend - Thranduil's proposal of dividing the wood to at least hear - and though Celeborn had followed his wife's flight as soon as he might, it seemed he had come too late. He breathed in, tried to dislodge the weight of shadow that seemed to have settled on his chest, and ventured a small hope. "Oft, in a lover, the command 'leave me in peace' means only 'work harder to comfort me.' Then to obey it and go away would be...unfeeling. The worst thing I could do." 

Thilevril smiled, not without sympathy. A frost eased in the depths of her hoar-grey eyes, but she did not move from her post, standing between him and his love. "This is not one of those times, my Lord. She needs to think, and to be alone." 

It was in him to be angry at this. Here, in unlooked for victory, with a stainless and shining future ahead, would Galadriel take away from him everything that he had fought for these long years? And if she tried it, did he not have the right to storm and sulk, and inflict some of his inner pain on others? Did he not have the right to speak to his own wife whenever and wherever and however he wished? 

He found his hands clenching, the desire to rage - at Thilevril, at Galadriel, at _someone_ strong on him. In ages past he and she had had some bitter conflicts, coming almost to blows, often to the breaking of furniture. But that was with the woman who had once been Nerwen, warrior princess of the Noldor - a woman who would not have bowed and walked away when one of his younger relatives challenged her. Breathing out, a weakness came over him, as if he had thrust through by a war blade, as if he had lost far too much blood. How could he take his anger to this diminished, saddened Galadriel? It would be like kicking the wounded because they could not be well. 

His voice and posture somewhat less forgiving than he had hoped, he said "May she rest well and recover swiftly." Turned away, holding himself stiff against the mortal ache, aware there was little chance of either. 

Thranduil came on him then. The King of Northern Mirkwood had shed his armour in favour of a green velvet tunic, broidered with white gems. He bore a flagon of wine, and an aide followed after him, burdened with armfuls of maps. "I have given orders for a feast tomorrow," he said. "In honour of the new Age, and our survival. Your second - Merethir? - pledged that the elves of Lorien were as willing to make merry as we." 

It was hard to think of rejoicing now, but truly this was the time for celebration, healing, rewarding the loyal and brave. Forgetting war. Learning to live again. "Of course," Celeborn said, baffled as to what he should feel, uncertain if the hollowness within even had a name. He tried to turn his mind from it, but - like trimming the sails of a boat in an uncertain wind - it was no sooner done than undone again, a constant battle. "That was a good thought. Now I will look at your maps and consider where we may fairly apportion the forest between us." 

Thranduil's tent had been set up just to the East of the hill's crest, beneath the open sky. It was a fair pavilion, carpeted with thickly woven rugs and hung with many tapestries, pricked with jewels. On other occasions it might have amused Celeborn that his distant cousin - who so passionately spoke of abandoning the ways of Doriath, returning to the simple life lived by the Nandor - had such a taste for beautiful things, for ostentation and finery. But today he scarcely saw the colours, much less appreciated the many storied tales and histories woven into its design. 

"It will be some time before Lorien will feed or shelter us as she used," he said, and drank Thranduil's wine without tasting it. "Much of the woodland has been poisoned, and I know not how much strength is left in the rest, now that many years of delayed time have come upon us at once. I have no wish to expand the country for my own grandeur, or to take away anything that is yours. But the Galadhrim must have more land, else we starve." 

Then Thranduil smiled, ruefully. He leaned back in his seat and put a booted foot on the trestle table, whence his aide rapidly gathered the parchments, looking reproachful. "I am not my father, Celeborn. I do not accuse you of wishing to usurp my realm. Take all below the Narrows - did you not conquer it yourself? Do you not hold it even now? I would not attempt to wrest it from your grasp. And see, of what is left - even if I give a generous portion to the Beornings and the Woodmen - still I have more room to expand into than I have elves to do the work. We may grow for a hundred yeni ere we fill it." 

He gestured, and at his signal the scribe kindled the white lamps which stood on stands about the pavilion, then took his maps and bowed himself away, allowing the flap of the door to fall shut behind him. Late afternoon sunlight filtered through the green canvas of the tent, until they sat in radiance, as if in the centre of an emerald. In the sudden privacy, unobserved by prying eyes, Thranduil leaned forward, speaking softly. "I knew not that things were so ill in Lorien." 

Celeborn was aware that Thranduil did not speak of the Golden Wood alone. He sighed. Then - the weight being too heavy to bear - he put his head in his hands and pushed his long fingers into his hair. 

"I am sorry," said Thranduil, "I might have spoken gentler had I known. I little thought to see her so..." he stood up, laid his hand on one of the poles. "Weak does not seem to be the word for one who could bring down Dol Guldur with a song. Not 'weak' then, but sad. Reduced. What ails her?" 

He resisted putting it into words, as though saying it would give it more power over him than it already possessed. But that was folly. "It is the Sea." 

Across the table from him, Thranduil's smile altered, growing brittle and brilliant as cut crystal. It was, just barely, soothing to see there an echo of his own fragility. Long years had gone past without him speaking to this estranged kinsman, but that, like war, seemed to be over. Calandil was dead, and there was no other to whom he could speak plainly, who would understand, as Mirkwood's king would. 

"All her thoughts are turned to it. She sings openly of Valinor, and neither knows nor cares how it breaks me. With Nenya's power it seemed she could keep the longing at bay. It seemed... I thought... she desired to do so, for my sake. She fought, then, to stay with me. But the ring is gone, and she fights no longer." 

He brought one hand down, pushed at a spilled drop of ink, making a meaningless, ugly writing on the battered campaign table. Wished, briefly, that the fighting were not done. It would be a relief just to hit something, very hard. 

"I am unwanted by her now," he said. "An annoyance she would willingly cast aside, that she might go home. And it comes to me that perhaps, perhaps she did not love me at all, but only amused herself with me, while she pursued her vengeance against Sauron." He raised his head, saw Thranduil's normally cheerful face clouded, his bright eyes widened in haunting memory. "I recall that Oropher warned me it was so." 

At that, Thranduil came back to the present with a start, and a small bark of laughter. "My father was a good man, but he would not have entertained a kind thought about a Noldo, did any other explanation present itself. You are grieved indeed if you would heed his words now. You would not take them then." 

"I _am_ grieved. My heart fails me. It is too much labour to draw breath, and my thoughts..." Celeborn shook his head, as if it would help, "I do not know what to think. I pray you, Thranduil, do not expect sense out of me at this moment." 

The King of Mirkwood took off his circlet of flowers and looked at it narrowly, brushing a tender touch over the frail petals. He poured himself a drink and then sat again, uncrowned; one friend to another. "You know I do not like her? I never have." 

Surprisingly, Celeborn found some small comfort in this. It was good to be back among his own people, who cared less about seeming courteous than speaking the truth. "I could not have missed that." 

"Then you will know I speak from no bias, coloured by no fondness towards her." Thranduil gazed at the diamonds bedewed about his cuffs as if they could council him. Perhaps they could - their beauty lightening his spirit's flame. "When did the Call first come upon her?" 

Celeborn could place almost the day - though they had been many miles apart. So long it must have taken Celebrimbor to travel from Eregion to Lorinand, so long to nerve himself up to speak of his failure, his stupidity to her. So long standing, stammering out the story of how Annatar had deceived him. And then a moment, a single moment, when he held out his master work, the Ring of Adamant, like a fallen tear for her to take. He wondered - as he often had - whether he could have stopped her then, if he had only been there. It was fruitless to think it, impossible not to. "When she accepted Nenya," he said. 

"And that was an Age ago - more." 

"Yes." 

Thranduil's look of sympathy was both ruthless and wry. "Then I count you blessed," he said. "Do you know how long it took my own wife to leave? Less than one yen. I too have asked - as you do now - 'did she ever love me? How could she leave me? And if indeed she hated me, still...how could she leave her _children_?'" 

At this anguish, which he should have expected, avoided, but did not - so selfish he had become in his misery - Celeborn stirred, sat up, shamed into endurance. "Forgive me, cousin, I..." 

"No," said Thranduil, holding up a hand for silence. "I do not speak to air my own sorrow, but to help council you in yours. As one who has been in the same place, felt the same pain, and yet is now recovered. 

"Long I pondered this," he said. "And at last - walking among the houses of the Woodmen - I found my answer. I beheld a widow, weeping over her husband's body, and I thought 'we are not so different from they, after all'. No power of the will, no love, no strength of mind nor spirit can stave off mortal death beyond the time it is due. No more can an elf push back the Sea. But if Galadriel has fought it these many thousand years - and for your sake - you have at least this comfort, my friend. No other elf in Ennor has ever been loved with such strength of will, with such tenacity as she has loved you." 

* * *

Oswy watched with pleasure and yet a slight sense of loss as Cyn stiffly dismounted, turned to help Gytha from the saddle and was scoldingly shouldered aside by Leofwyn. "Do not lift her. I will do it! You are not yet so well that you can carry heavy burdens." 

Since the announcement had gone out that this part of the forest - together with the long sweep of meadow down to Anduin - now belonged to Lorien, many elves had come from Caras Galadhon, bringing what supplies they could. Cooking trenches had been dug, and the breeze was full of the scents of roasting meat and herbs. A festival air filled the preparations, as the folk of Lothlorien and those of the newly named Eryn Lasgalen mingled, bickered in friendly rivalry, exchanged news and laughing insults. But beyond the sense of enjoyment was a release - the knowledge that, at last, it was over. All that needed to be done had been done. What remained was to give thanks for survival, and return - in so far as it was possible - to normality. 

Oswy unstrapped baby Scild's basket from behind Cyn's saddle, and lifted his tiny brother out into the air. It had been only a day since Dol Guldur fell, but already grass and daisies covered the scar. Beneath the stamping hoof of Cyn's horse, the first flower of niphredil, white and green as springtime, unfurled in the early evening cool. Scild grizzled, scrunching his face up against some small discomfort, and Oswy saw the white gleam of a new tooth in his mouth, just as he began to wail in earnest. 

Handing the child to his mother swiftly, Oswy spotted Ulf in the crowd of elves. Sensing his glance, the woodman turned from his path, came to stand companionably close and watch the doings of Oswy's folk with a grin. "I have news from Rohan," he said, "And it is good. Theoden King arose from shadow and rode to death and great glory outside Gondor. But the paths of Rohan lie open once more and all peril is driven off. Its folk await the return of Eomer, King, to a country which has weathered the storm." He gave them a sideways look, full of thought. "You will be returning there soon?" 

Rohan, like many other things, had altered in Oswy's mind since passing into the Golden Wood. The thought of home was less comforting than it should be - outgrown, empty of wonder. "I know not," he said. "Gytha is so happy in Lorien, and I am minded of what you said - it seems a terrible fate to me never to see the elves again." 

"Gytha is happy now," said Leofwyn, uncomfortably, "Too happy, I deem. Did you not mark that she said 'mae govannen' to you, and not 'waes thu hal'. I fear for her. What will happen when she is grown to maidenhood - will she not fall in love with one of these unearthly, beautiful folk, and thus condemn herself to a barren future? You, and little Scild - where will you look for wives? Shall I have no grandchildren? No one to sing of Oshelm and keep his memory alive down the ages? I like it not. Men we are, and with Men we belong." 

"They have given us succour and shelter, and deserve some loyalty in return," said Oswy, stung. 

"An alliance in time of need, so the Lord termed it," she countered. "I warrant he does not expect us to stay, now that the way is open for us to return to our homeland." 

Seeing them glower at one another Ulf laughed his rasping laugh. "I have this day received more new land than I have folk to fill it," he said, rocking back on his heels. "Why not do as I did, and settle with the woodmen? You will be hemmed in with elves, sufficient to gladden any man's heart, but among your own kind. And thus I will be able to achieve the purpose I conceived when I first saw you, and will be easier in my mind for it." 

"I..." Oswy was taken by surprise by this suggestion, but the more he turned it in his mind, the more he admired its shape, as leaving them with everything they had gained, and losing nothing of worth. "What do you think, Cyn?" 

After riding across the battlefield between Lorien and what was now it's eastern colony, Cyn had sunk down to sit on a fallen tree, but he looked merely weary - no longer in danger. "I will bide by your decision," he said, quietly, and turned to smile as Gytha presented him a caterpillar she had found, upon a stick. 

"Then," Oswy put out his hand and Ulf clasped it, "I will take your kindness for myself and my folk, and - if my Lord release me - we will come and live among you." 

For a moment they were glad, as though the sun shone upon them, and then Leofwyn laughed, merrily. Looking in his mother's face, Oswy was astonished and thankful to find a lightheartedness there which she had not worn since the orc attack. Her blue eyes gleamed. "And thus are all the songs proved true," she said, grinning. "How perilous is the Golden Wood! For look, did not the folk of Oshelm venture there, never to be seen again in the fair fields of their birth? Such victims of sorcery we are! The heart trembles to retell it." 

************** 

The stars stood in a dome of light over the hill of Amon Lanc, and elves danced there, flickering gold and pale in starlight and firelight, their hair like shadow and their eyes like flame. A long table was set out for the High folk, and there sat the Lady Galadriel, bearing the night sky as a crown. Slender and white and sad she seemed, like a carven tree of marble, whose song has been forgotten in the long wearing of time. 

Yet her voice was ever raised in praise of those who had fought well, and many were the elves she singled out by name and rewarded with gifts or glory. Beside her, Celeborn sat, and he had done off his armour, and was clad in silver-grey, a torc of twisted mithril about his throat. His dark eyes were preoccupied, and his temper chancy. Only Thranduil, in that company, seemed glad; his laugh as bright as his yellow hair. 

It was just ere dawn that Oswy's plea for an audience was heard, and Ardil came to escort him to the High Table. The sky was lightening in the East, and above the horizon one brilliant star shone palest gold. Gytha lay asleep by her father's side, sprawled in a nest of cloaks, and Leofwyn said "I will stay here. It is your place to speak for us now. You need me not." 

So Oswy came before Celeborn alone, and he bowed and said, "Lord, I have a boon to ask." 

"You want to go home," said the elf lord, with a small, twisted smile, "Of course." 

"Well, in truth," said Oswy, conscious that his next words would settle the shape of his future into something untried, something rather less reassuring than 'home', "I have accepted an offer from Lord Ulf that I may settle my folk among his. If you will release me to do so." 

"You have done me good and faithful service," said Celeborn, and it seemed to Oswy that he relaxed a little, briefly touching - if not happiness - then at least content. "And are owed much thanks." 

Then he leaned forward, and Oswy caught a flash of the brisk practicality he had come to trust. "But tell me how you will live. If I do not mistake my guess, you have no woodcraft. And if our hopes are not betrayed this time, there will be no further need for your skill at warfare." 

In the silence, Oswy berated himself for not thinking of this earlier. His folk and he had nothing. One elderly gelding, and his mother's cob, did not make up for the loss of all their stock, lying slain on the wolds of Rohan. He would be reduced to leaning on Ulf's goodwill for some years, ere he could learn another skill, and that he most certainly did not desire. 

Seeing his doubt, Celeborn motioned to Erethon, who had been given a seat at the High Table in token of his promotion to the position of Captain of East Lorien. Some silent communication passed between them before the dark archer rose and departed. "It seems to me," said the Lord of Lorien, "That your herds are more likely scattered than entirely slain by the orcs. Reduced, they will be, but such remnant as there is, I will have gathered and brought to you in your new home." 

Erethon returned, and with him, lead by no rein, unsaddled and glimmering like the dawn sky, there came two elven-steeds. Like the breath of the North wind they seemed, prancing, shaking light from their manes, their hooves making no mark on the forest floor. The stallion's eyes were full of pride, as though he well knew his own worth, and the mare's so wise she seemed almost on the brink of speech. To Oswy, whose folk valued their horses almost as high as their children, these took his breath away - beyond jewels, beyond crowns, beyond kingdoms. Surely they were Mearas, whose line had seemed likely to end in Rohan with the untameable, unmateable Shadowfax. A legend ending, and a light going out of the world. Now it seemed that would not be so. The Royal Steeds of the Mark would continue. And - if he could believe this gesture - _his_ would be the stable from which they came. It was a mighty gift! 

"Sularan is the stallion's name," said Celeborn, "'King of the wind'. And the mare is Celglin; 'Flowing gleam'. I do not give them to you lightly, for their lineage is greater than yours. Their forefathers came out of the West, and many of my kin were slain defending the ships that carried them here. If you - or any of your folk - mistreat them, they will find their way back to me, and I will know." 

"My Lord," cried Oswy, and his heart was moved with a painful joy at this honour, and this parting, "I will _never_ betray this trust. May your rein in Lorien endure forever to witness it." 

Then Celeborn laughed, not unkindly, "Forever is too long a time for any man to foresee," he said, "But I thank you nevertheless. Go with such blessing as I am able to give, Oswy, friend of the elves." 

**** 

Oswy took the horses to Leofwyn, and she marvelled at them. Already she had moved such few possessions as they retained in among the camp of the Woodmen. But at the sight of Sularan and Celglin she looked back at the revelry of elves, and the Lord and Lady of Lorien, chill and still among it. "They have given us a future," she said, in awe. "One which they do not see for themselves." 

He looked at her, puzzled, and she smiled, sadly. "There was a time in this war when I deemed the pain of fighting evil too deep to be worth the cost. I thought of you then, yet I might have spoken more truly of others." One last glance she gave, seeing the two stately elves rise and walk aside together, without touching. "Some wounds linger still, unseen. And our new dawn is bought at a great price." She sighed, and then dusted her hands together in preparation for work. "All the more should we seize it with both hands, to honour what has gone before. Come, we have a house and a stable, and a new life to build. Let us begin it now." 

* * *


	24. One More Parting

Earendil still glimmered bright above, though a pale yellow dawn lay upon the wood. Behind the topaz and gold horizon the sun prepared herself to rise, and the canopy smoked with mist in her faint heat. Released from centuries of darkness, buds were bursting into new growth, and already there was a shimmer of green. A blackbird sang. A song thrush answered - the bare promise that soon Eryn Lasgalen would have its full chorus of birds to greet the day. 

Celeborn watched as Galadriel drifted aside from the revelry. Drowsy now, and contented, it went on without her. She had brought her harp to the feast, but did not play. Now she clutched it to her, shield-like, as she walked away from him. Her face was settled and Queenly, her smile serene, as of one well satisfied with a hard won victory. Only he noticed her bloodless grip on the singing wood and knew that she was afraid. 

He too was afraid. No one who knew the history of the Eldar could fail to understand the power of words, and it would almost be better to remain thus - side by side, apart, like gentle ghosts, who do not raise their voices, but who never touch - than to speak and risk the pain and blame and hate that might come of it. Now he understood why, yestereve, she had been unable to face him. This morning, he was not sure he could face her. 

So he hesitated a little, while the primrose light of a new day broke over him, and a breeze shook dew in arcs of radiance from the branches, and it seemed to him that he had never yet done anything truly brave, but that now he must. 

At last, drawing in a great breath, he turned his back on his people's rejoicing and walked down the further side of Amon Lanc, and if his step was quick and light it was so, perhaps, because his breast was full of emptiness. He passed under the shadow of the trees, and on to where - in a place of rocks and fern - a spring welled and fell coldly over stone to meander over the forest floor, reflecting the sky in a runnel of liquid gold. In that quiet dell Galadriel sat, white and forlorn, with the harp in her lap. Her fingers were still on its strings, her voice silent. 

Quietly, he came and sat beside her. For a while, she studied the bare slopes of the hill, and he the lightened depths of the wood, unspeaking. There was a frail peace to be found, just sitting together, close enough so that her sleeve touched his, the very edge of his dark green cloak fell over the skirts of her gown. A wood-pigeon called softly, and there came a peeping of sparrows. The water sang an endless, changeful tune. Then - it seemed a hard thing to do, yet inescapable, as if fated before time - he reached out and took her hand. 

Galadriel laughed, sadly. "We have drunk the cup of parting," she said. "But when I offered it, I knew not that the dregs would be so bitter. Forgive me?" 

Something twisted in him, like a knife. "You need not drain the cup," he urged, knowing the words were vain and foolish, but unable to keep them back. "Stay." 

At that she turned to him, and leaned in, searching his face as she had done beneath Dol Guldur. In response, he tore down the walls about his mind, opened himself, and caught fear, regret - a yearning, which might once have been joyful, but was now merely torment inexpressible. "My Lord," she said, and looked away again, "I am minded of my cousin Aredhel, whose husband believed he possessed her. Who would not let her out of his sight. Who drove her away because he could not let her go." 

Caught by the cruelty of this comparison, Celeborn saw, behind his eyes, the heavy, brooding darkness of Nan Elmoth, where Eol lived, kinsman of Elu Thingol, and therefore his own kin. Aredhel had fled from Gondolin as from a cage, and Eol had caught her - his wandering White Lady, the light in his darkness, the flame by which he warmed himself. Of course he wished to keep her safe. Of course he did not want to see her return to her airy prison, where she would sicken like a falcon with its wings strapped. Of course his fierce protective jealousy had made her hate him, so that she poisoned his son against him. So that at last both fled back into Turgon's snare, while Eol, following them, was caught in a doom from which he could only escape by death. 

Celeborn thought of Eol, standing alone against the contempt of all Gondolin, his wife's face full of hatred, his son, Maeglin, closed and unmoving as stone, the Doom of the Kinslayers already working in him like slow venom. Knowing he was forbidden to leave, forbidden even to take his agony home to heal... No wonder Eol had snapped at last and tried to kill the cursed child, only to succeed in killing the woman he loved. 

"I confess," Celeborn said, darkly, "that for the first time I understand my kinsman all too well. What business do the princesses of the Noldor have, marrying us, if they intend to desert us in the end?" 

Galadriel made a small, strangled sound of protest and pulled her hand from his. "I do not desert you!" she cried, "Nothing prevents you from coming with me. It is _you_. You desert me!" 

"I have learned this lesson at least from Eol," sullenly, Celeborn pursued her metaphor where she did not wish it to go, "I will not follow you into a trap from which there is no return." 

"Valinor is no trap!" 

"That is not what you said when first you came to Doriath," he said, seeing her hands tighten on the harp. The strings bowed and whispered under the pressure, and he thought it fitting that she should tear it apart, since he had made it for her. "'Too small', you said. You had learned everything there was to learn, and you were restless, dissatisfied, cramped. You came here to be free." 

She sat very tall and straight, and there were tears in her eyes like stars. "Then let me be free! For now it is you who constrain me. Is Endor to be my dungeon, and you my gaoler?" 

A storm of grief and shadow and fury broke over him. He had to get up, walk away. It drove him a few steps into the wood, and he felt lifted by it, helpless as a fallen leaf in the blast. But he would not give in. Mastering himself, he stopped, unclenched his fists, looked out - and behold! the sun shone on the roof of growing branches, on the buds of leaves, and the small white flowers of gnarled blackthorn. Light was dancing about his feet, and the stream shone now silver-blue as the clear, windy sky above. 

In the beauty, anger left him. But the grief remained. Too deep to be touched by changes of mood or weather it lay in him like Mirror-mere, still, reflecting only snow and night. 

He came back, sat down once more by her side, bent his head in sorrow. "Have I truly been Eol to your Aredhel?" he asked softly. "Have I clipped your wings, and held you back from your desires? Have I driven you away? I... It was not my intent." 

Galadriel laughed again, and though the sound was bitter he sensed nothing from her mind but weariness. Her grip on the harp relaxed and she bent, placing it by her feet, unbroken. "No." Turning, she took his hands in hers, so that Nenya rested glittering in his palm. "You have given me all I asked, and more, taken too little for yourself, and grudged nothing. I spoke in the pain of parting, unjustly. You do not push me away. It is the Sea. Only that." 

Withdrawing one hand he wrapped that arm around her. She stiffened at first, but slowly leaned in until their heads rested against each other, and their hair, silver and gold, gleamed together like the lights of Aman behind them. "Thranduil said a wise thing," he began, willing his body to remember every detail of this slight touch, so that none of it should ever be lost. 

She snorted, unladylike, "Thranduil? Wise? Aye, about the sprouting of acorns and the hunting of harts in the wood." 

_And other matters of this world of ours, which those who entered it only to fall homesick for Valinor might not find important,_ Celeborn thought and felt again what gulfs separated them - how apart she had been from him even when they first wed. "Thranduil told me to think of the Sea-longing as though it were our equivalent of mortal death," he said. "A thing which cannot be fought, cannot be held back. Against such a force how could I possibly be your captor? _How could I_ constrain you?" 

Galadriel drew back so that she could look into his eyes. _Do you not know?_ She touched his cheek with fingertips roughened from weaving - a small, wondering caress. "You are my captor because I love you." Rueful, and distantly warm was her smile, and she met his gaze without flinching. "When you summoned me to bring down Dol Guldur I was afraid. When I beheld you, after the Ring was destroyed, and the Age ended, I both feared and hoped that I would care for you no longer." 

Her hand fell to her lap, pleated the glimmering white fabric of her dress while she watched it, rather than him. "Feared because - I would not lose this last thing, this marriage which has been my best and greatest deed in these lands. Yet I hoped - because it would make it easier for me to leave." Glancing up again, quick and shy as a linnet, her smile brightened. "My hope proved false, and my fear was assuaged. You are still beloved." Her fingers clenched tight, making a sunburst of long creases over her knees. "If you ask me to stay, I will stay.' 

'Until love is no more," Celeborn said, heavily, knowing what that pledge would cost in the end, though he yearned to take it. "And hate replaces it, as Aredhel learned to loathe Eol." The pain inside brought out a spasm of laughter, "And then I will lose you anyway." 

"Yes." She leaned once more against him, and already, although he held her in his arms, her spirit seemed immeasurably remote, gone beyond his recall. "I would prefer to leave while I may bear our love with me, into the undying lands. Knowing that it will be preserved, unstained, by the power of the Valar. How could I remain Galadriel, if I did not love you?' 

He felt then that the world should end - the sky fall and the ground become a pit beneath him. How _could_ life go on, now? But it did not happen, the birds sang, the water chuckled in its bed of leaves. His throat closed, and his eyes filled, trying - out of their mercy - to choke and blind him so that he did not have to say it, or watch as she heard. "I understand," he said. "You must go then.' 

And Ennor went on, unperturbed, while Galadriel gave him a smile of gratitude and joy that trampled his bleeding fea into the dust. "But will you not come with me?" she urged, "I will not plead, but I will ask. Come with me, my husband. Do not leave me." 

She saw the answer in his face, perhaps, for her smile faltered and her own eyes welled, silently, bereaved. 

Unable to watch her weep, he took her face reverently between his hands, and kissed her, long and sweet. Her tears fell upon his mouth and mingled with his own. "I cannot." he said at last, drawing away, wishing that grief would slay him - so that he might indeed go with her in the only way that seemed possible. "For the call of the sea is like death. We cannot resist it when it comes, but we may not choose the time of it ourselves, cutting short the time we are given here to accomplish whatever task Iluvatar desires of us. I may not take my death into my own hands, not even to follow you." 

She wiped her eyes, furiously, "You give too much credence to Thranduil's foolish analogy. It is false!" 

"It may be," he said, knowing that he was too stubborn, too strong to fade from sorrow, and hating himself for it, "I cannot tell. I can only say that it seems true to me. My heart revolts from the West, as from the wilful taking of my own life. I wish it were not so. But it is." 

They fell silent, and a wind tossed the treetops above them with a great sighing. After a long while Galadriel whispered, "Listen, do you not hear the roaring of the ocean?" But he dried his tears on the edge of his cloak and replied, brokenly, "No. I hear the many voices of the forests of Middle-earth." 

Then he picked up the harp that had lain silent at her feet, and tuned it, and sang: 

_ínath arnediad sui revail i gelaidh  
di-rynd luin Elbereth, ias elenath thiliar  
dorthannem nedh ardh bain a lain  
ú-aníron cuio ereb!  
Ha thia i amar presta  
fuin eth thindor dôr immen  
a gwannen si galad nin  
i adbannatha hi i ylf anim?  
Navaer galad nin. Henion.  
A Elbereth Gilthoniel, a tiro ellenin._

And so the choice was made, and the Battle of the Golden Wood, which had seemed a victory, became for them only the last mortal blow of a long defeat. 

* * *

The End 

* * *

Many thanks to the extremely clever people of the GWAITH I-PHETHDAIN, whose website can be found here: out of whose learned translations I have cobbled together this poem. And thanks to Bejai for checking and correcting those bits of it which are original.

Translation:

Years without count, like the wings of trees,  
Under blue vaults of Elbereth wherein stars glisten,  
We have dwelled in a realm fair and free.  
I don't want to live alone!  
But the world is changing.  
Darkness out of a shadowed land lies between us,  
And lost now is my radiance.  
Who will refill the cup for me?  
Farewell, my light. I understand.  
Oh Elbereth Star-kindler, watch over my star.

And many thanks to all my wonderful reviewers without whom this would certainly have been abandoned half way through. I hope it was worth the wait :) 


End file.
